Project Guardian
by Saint Paul
Summary: Post-Hogwarts. Harry's an Auror and has been selected to join a group of international Aurors dedicated to stopping Dark Wizards around the world.
1. The Guardian Project

Chapter One: The Guardian Project

Harry's eyes snapped open to the sound of rustling feathers against his window. Pulling himself out of his bed he spotted Loki, one of the austere looking black and gray owls that the Auror corps used to send orders out. Harry swept to the bay window of his London flat, and opened up the window to let the bird in. 

"Hello Loki." Harry muttered as he removed the sealed scroll from the owl's talon and dropped a few owl treats in front of him. "Did you bring me a take-some-time-off letter?" The owl hooted in what was unmistakably a derisive manner. 

"I thought not." Harry pressed his thumb into the seal and it broke open at his touch. He was unrolling the scroll as Loki flew off. 

Mr. Potter 

You have been chosen to participate in Project Guardian. 

The enclosed Port Key will activate at exactly 9:15 a.m. Make sure you're on it.

Regards:

Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Project Guardian, Harry had heard them talking about it in the Department of Magical Cooperation and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He had absolutely no idea what it was about though

Harry checked the back of the note, there was nothing on it. This was not unexpected however. Owl-orders were very rarely detailed, just in case they fell into wrong hands. He also knew that the Port Key that had been included would be charmed to not only activate at the required time, but would leave with him, and only him, or no one at all.

Speaking of which... Harry looked down at the small item which had fallen out of the scroll when he'd unrolled it. "Well, that's interesting." Harry muttered to himself as he bent down to pick it up. It was a miniature, fully animated model of a Hungarian Horntail, exactly like the one he'd gotten just before the first task in the Triwizard Tournament in his fourth year. 

Over the four years that Harry had been an Auror, and the three since Shacklebolt had been elected to lead the division, Harry had gotten used to his superior's unusual sense of humor. Often when he sent a Port Key such as this one, he chose an item to give the Auror a small hint to his assignment. It was more of a joke, really. Normally Harry could figure them out after a little work, but this time he was absolutely stumped. 

"Maybe he's sending me to Hungary?" Harry muttered to himself. Well, he thought with a shrug, I'll find out sooner or later. In the meantime, I'd better get ready to go. He glanced at his wall clock, he had just under three-quarters of an hour to get ready. That was fairly leisurely compared to some of the other times he'd gotten owled. 

After he'd had a quick shower and some breakfast, Harry found himself dressed in his official Auror robes, with his mission case slung across his back, his wand in one hand and his secondary broom, a moderate Starfire Seventeen, in the other. 

The mission case was the standard type that was assigned to all Aurors. It contained an assortment of useful potions, some for healing, some for coercion. A magical lock picking set, Harry's old invisibility cloak, and a few other dark detection devices. 

At 9:14 Harry had the dragon figurine clutched in his palm. A minute ticked by and he felt that now-familiar hooking sensation just behind his naval. After a quick ride through a swirling vortex of color Harry found himself standing in an unfamiliar location, but surrounded by very familiar people. 

"Harry," Kingsley Shacklebolt greeted him, taking his hand and pulling him forward. "You can put that wand away, you're not in any danger." 

Harry nodded and stowed his wand in his pocket, shouldering his broomstick as he did. At this point he stopped to look at the other members of group who were surrounding him. 

Directly in front of him were Shacklebolt and Mad-Eye Moody, who though he was mostly retired was still very involved with the Aurors, and if anybody thought ill of this arrangement, they certainly didn't make themselves known. Also present were Nymphadora Tonks, whose hair was a blindingly bright prink at the moment, Dawlish and Rories, Neville Longbottom and a black haired young Auror Harry knew had just recently passed his evaluation period, but who Harry had never actually met before. 

"Good ter see yeh Potter," Moody grunted as his magical eye rotated around in it's socket, searching for danger. "Now that yer here we can get going." He turned and led the group towards a large stone building, his wooden leg clunking the whole way. 

"Sorry, but where exactly is `here'" Harry asked Tonks as he fell in step next to her. He kept his gaze strictly ahead of him, and forced himself not to look at Tonks, who was rapidly changing the color of her hair so that it looked like some sort of lava lamp or kaleidoscope, it made him sick to watch her. He hated it when she did that. He hated it and she knew it. 

"Harry, this is the not-so-lost city of Atlantis." Tonks said with a mischievous grin on her face. 

Harry gaped. "No way! You mean this place, Atlantis, is real?" 

"Oh definitely. Hasn't been used much, but now we've found ourselves a real use for the place." 

"Tonks..." Kingsley's voice had a warning note in it. "That's enough." 

"Sorry sir, I forgot Harry hasn't been cleared for that yet." The group fell silent as Harry passed under the ancient looking archway that led into the massive stone building. The building itself was made of some unknown type of stone that shone with a green brilliance in the light. All around the archway were carved intricate looking glyphs that Harry didn't recognize. He wondered idly if Hermione, who had taken Ancient Runes at Hogwarts, would know any of them. 

The passed under the archway and into the cool stone of the building itself. It took a moment for Harry's eyes to adjust to the dimmer interior lighting. But when it did he was confronted by probably the last sight he'd thought he'd see. 

Aurors. At least a hundred of them. Harry could see nearly uniform black robes on each and every one of them. But, that wasn't possible, there just weren't that many Aurors on active duty.

Suddenly Shacklebolt stopped and turned to the rest of them. "I almost forgot," He took out his wand and pointed it at the lot of them _"Banderali Capitalo"_ Harry blinked and there on his left arm, just below the shoulder, was the British Union Jack, his country's flag. 

Moody nodded. "Good now we're ready. Come on." The aged Auror turned and clunked away and the rest of the group followed him. They entered a large Amphitheater where the rest of the Aurors, who Harry now assumed were from other countries, were sitting. The British group took their seats as well, and after a few minutes the group became settled and a tan skinned Auror with dark hair and dark eyes approached the stage. After clearing his throat he began his speech. 

"Bienvenidos a todos, Me llama-" He paused and smiled sheepishly. Taking out his wand, he pointed it at his own throat. _"Traducias"_

"Sorry about that." Harry figured he must have cast some sort of translation spell, because his words weren't matching his lips, sort of like a badly dubbed muggle movie. The Spanish Auror cleared his throat again and continued. "As I was saying, welcome everybody, my name is Rodrigo Zapoteca, head of the Guardian Project. You all are here because you've been found by your superiors to be the absolute best of your divisions. And so you've been chosen to become part of the Guardian Project. 

In an effort to strengthen international cooperation in magical communities, and in the hopes of preventing another wizard like Voldemort from ever coming to power,-" Harry ducked lower into his seat to avoid notice, which Tonks laughed at him for, "- The various governments have agreed to form the Guardian Corps, an elite group of Aurors from around the world, whose purpose is to insure that what happened with Voldemort never happens again." 

Two other Senior Aurors, one of whom was Kingsley Shacklebolt, brought forward a small wooden casket that looked vaguely familiar to Harry. He was sure he'd seen it somewhere before. But he wasn't entirely sure where. 

The two Aurors opened up the casket and removed from it a rough hewn wooden goblet that was full to the brim with dancing blue and white flames. 

"A few of you may recognize the Goblet of Fire, which we've borrowed for a specific purpose. Last night the heads of the Auror divisions placed the names of all their Guardian candidates into the Goblet. The Goblet has now evaluated all of your strengths and weaknesses and has sorted you into squadrons. And now, we'll reveal the squadrons the Goblet has chosen for you all." Rodrigo took out his wand and shot a stream of golden sparks out of it and into the Goblet. The flames in the Goblet grew higher and turned multiple colors, the flames seemed to pulse for a moment then it shot out a shower of sparks in many different colors. 

Harry gasped as a large red spark headed straight for him. It alighted on his right arm and with a flash became another patch, this one in the shape of a stylized bird's head. A bird with bright red plumage. Below the bird was a small banner with `Redhawks' written on it, the name of his Squadron. 

He looked over at Tonks and noticed she also had a Redhawk patch on her arm. "Hey Harry!" Tonks nudged him, "Looks like we're in the same squad."

Harry nodded. He looked around and saw that Neville had a black knight, Dawlish had a fierce looking tiger and Rories had a green dragon. 

As for the young Auror who Harry didn't know, Harry was surprised to find that he was also a member of the Redhawk squad. 

Harry was about to introduce himself when the crowd around him began to shift as everybody got out of their seats, and filed out of the room, Harry with them. 

"Well, I suppose it'll be time to meet our team mates won't it?" Tonks muttered as the group dispersed. 

"No. Tomorrow, ye'll meet yer new teams." Moody growled, clunking along with the rest of them. " As for now, well, I figured we`d do a bit of training." This statement was met by a few groans. 

"Hey! None o' that now. Remember: CONSTANT VIGILANCE." 

The next morning Harry woke up with a major crick in his neck and a stiffness in his shoulders. All thanks to Moody's training techniques. Still, at least he couldn't say that yesterday had been boring, not in the slightest. At any rate he woke up in the barracks of the Atlantean compound along with the other British Aurors, minus Tonks and Rories, who were in the women's barracks nearby. 

Or at least, they had been five minutes ago, now they were bursting into the men's half, singing and being entirely too perky for that hour of the morning. "Morning boys!" They shouted. "It's rise and shine time!" 

Bloody hell," Harry grumbled. "What do you think you're doing?" 

"I believe," Said Tonks, her violet curls bouncing merrily, "It's what's commonly referred to as a wake up call." 

Neville began to say something but was stopped mid-word by a huge yawn. 

"I agree with Neville" Dawlish muttered, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. 

"Uh uh uh." Rories tutted as Harry went to lay back down. "Now of that now, Kingsley sent us to get you lot out of bed."

"Oh ho, this is Kingsley's fault is it?" Dawlish muttered darkly. "I'll be sure to remember that."

"Either way, we've got to go to breakfast." The men, grumbling mutinously, got ready nevertheless and ten minutes later they were eating breakfast in a large cafeteria. 

"So what do you reckon our new squad's going to be like Tonks?" 

"I don't know" She answered around a bite of scrambled egg. "But it shouldn't be too bad considering there'll be three of us Brits"

"Yeah but what about that other guy? The kid who just entered the Division? I don't even know his name." Harry muttered, eyeing the black haired man who sat eating his breakfast without looking at anybody.

"His first name is something weird sounding, looked kind of unpronounceable to me."

"Ah well." Harry shrugged. "He'll have to introduce himself eventually won't he?" Suddenly a large gong sounded through the hall and every one fell completely silent. Every eye turned towards the door where a tall man with stern features and a severe frown entered and stood, straight and rigid to the side of the door frame. He took a silver whistle that was hanging around his neck, put it to his lips and blew one loud note that rang clearly from one end of the room to the next. 

"ATTEN-HUT!" The man shouted and instantly each and every one of the Aurors, no matter what language they spoke, sprang to their feet and snapped to attention.

"Alright now!" The Sergeant barked, striding up and down the pathway between the two tables. "The moment you've all been waiting for. When I call your squadron, you will fall in line, march right through that door and meet your commanding officer, there you will receive further instructions. Do I make myself clear?"

A chorus of "Yes Sir!" in many different languages replied. The Sergeant looked slightly pleased at the response. 

"Right then!" He continued. "RIDGEBACKS!" Rories immediately stepped away from the table and, along with about a dozen others, fell into line and walked determinedly out of the hall.

"BLACK KNIGHTS." Went next, including Neville Longbottom. 

"HAMMERHEADS!" Was the next group to leave. They were followed by the Sabretooths and the Hellhounds, the Hatchets and the Supernovas. Then:

"REDHAWKS!" Harry and the other two remaining English Aurors immediately left their places and, after being joined by nine others, left the hall. They were greeted by a man with the build of a stone wall. He had slightly thinning auburn hair and a beard the same color, his eyes were as gray as steel and as cold as ice. 

"Alright you lot." He grunted, taking a long drag of the cigar in his mouth. "My name is Alan Collins and I'm your supervisor. I don't know what kind of rules and discipline..." He paused to glare at one of the foreign Aurors. "Or lack thereof, you had to deal with in your own governments" He took another drag and blew the smoke out of his nose. "But here, and for as long as you're with the Guardians, you'll answer to me and obey my every order without question. Do I make myself clear?" The Redhawks gave him an affirmation.

"Alright then. Follow me." He led them down the corridor just as the next Squadron was coming out of the hallway. They also saw Mad-Eye coming to greet them.

"Boy, do I feel sorry for them." Tonks muttered to Harry out of the corner of her mouth. It took all Harry had not to snicker in reply. They traveled down the corridor until they reached a doorway that had the Redhawk insignia emblazoned across it's front. 

"Cornish Pixie." Collins muttered and the door swung open. The aged Auror stepped back and waved the team inside. They entered a large room full of large recliner chairs. It also had a number of full bookshelves and a large fireplace with a roaring fire, (probably for Flooing) on the wall was what Harry recognized to be a full length Foe-Glass. There were a number of doors leading out of this room and Harry was suddenly reminded very much of the Gryffindor common room. 

"All right there Harry?" 

Harry blinked stupidly. "Ron?" 

"That's right mate." The redheaded young man grinned wryly, leaning back in his chair. "The Ministry offered me a job in the project. How could I refuse?" Harry sank into the chair next to Ron as his team mates filed into the room to have a look around. 

"Ginny should be back shortly." Ron said. Harry was about to ask what in the name of Merlin Ginny was doing in Guardian, when something else caught his attention. A young, willowy woman with sapphire blue eyes and silver hair that flowed off her shoulders like moonlight, next to her was a hunched over man with dark brooding features and a large hooked nose, who walked somewhat duck-footed. 

"Fleur? Krum? What are you guys doing here?" He asked as his fellow Triwizard Champions entered the room.

"Ve are being Aurors." Krum muttered 

"Oui." Fleur confirmed with a small smirk on her lips. "what did you zink we were doing?" 

"Alright now that we're all here, with the exception of Miss Weasley, we can begin. As a member of the Guardians you will be required to maintain the utmost secrecy, no one can know of anything, and I mean anything, that we do here. You are not even allowed to mention project guardian. The is absolutely top level security, and I cannot stress that enough. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

The others nodded. 

"Good." Collins gestured around the room. "This is the Redhawks' headquarters. Personal quarters are through that door on the left, the training center is over to the right and the medical wing is through the third door there. You have the rest of the day to yourselves, I'll see you tomorrow at eight-hundred hours." And Collins disappeared through the door leading to his quarters. 

"He's rather er, curt isn't he?" Ron muttered as he stared at the door that the copper haired Auror exited through.

"Ah, don't mind him." An American wizard with coal black hair and completely white eyes flopped into a nearby desk and put his feet up on the table. "He was my superior officer for awhile. He's not so bad once you get to know him." He offered a hand to Ron and Harry which they both shook. "My name's John, John Screibb. I'm an American, if you couldn't already tell by the shoulder patch or the cocky attitude." John grinned. 

"My name's Harry Potter and this here is Ron Weasley."

"I'm not an Auror." Ron informed, a little too quickly. 

"You're not? Then what are you doing here, if you don't mind me asking?" 

"Actually I was kind of wondering that too, Ron." Harry turned towards his best friend, waiting for an explanation. 

Ron shrugged modestly. "Oh well, I'm actually the squad's Research and Development specialist. The Ministry, the English Ministry that is, recruited me. They wanted to get my brothers Fred and George too, but well, they don't really respond well to authority, as you well know Harry. Plus they like running the joke shop better." Ron shrugged. "They did manage to convince Ginny, my sister, she's here as our team Medi-witch." 

"Ah speaking of Medi-witches," John interrupted as a young witch with light brown hair and blue eyes walked over and dropped into his lap. "I'd like you to meet Kara, one of our field medics. Kara, this here is Harry and Ron." 

"Nice to meet you." She gave the two of them a pleasant smile and shook their hands 

"She's also my wife, so hands off the both of you."

"Oh shut up John." Kara muttered smacking him lightly on the arm. 

Tonks flounced over and sat on the corner of the table that John had his feet on. "Well boys, what do you think of the new accommodations?" 

"They're not bad. Kind of remind me of Gryffindor Tower back at Hogwarts." Harry replied.

"Yeah." Ron agreed. "Now that you mention it, I do see something of a resemblance."

"Ravenclaw common was a lot like this too." Tonks admitted.

"I didn't know you were a Ravenclaw, Tonks."

"Oh yeah. Eagles all the way." Tonks grinned and striped her hair bronze and blue. 

Suddenly a tall Mexican Auror, rushed over to them. "I saw that!" He cried. "You're a metamorphmagus!"

"Yeah. I am, Nymphadora Tonks at your service. But I'll warn you, call me Nymphadora and I'll rearrange your face, for a change."

"Hey, that's fine with me. I am Javier Ramirez. Auror Extraordinaire!" He took hold of Tonks' hand and lightly kissed the back of it with a wink.

"Alright Don Juan, or whatever your name is, that`s enough of that." Tonks snapped, snatching her hand away.

"Whatever you say my beautiful chameleon." He turned towards Harry. "Ah, I know who you are, my friend. You are Harry Potter. Vanquisher of You-Know-Who." He studied Harry's face for a moment. "Didn't you use to have a scar on your forehead? Like this?" He blinked and a lightning bolt scar split his forehead, identical to the one Harry once had. Tonks looked dumbstruck, her mouth hanging open in shock.

"I did." Harry said with a grin at Tonks' face. "But it vanished as soon as Voldemort perished. Apparently, since it represented my link to him, once that link was gone so was the scar."

Tonks recovered herself. "You're a metamorphmagus too?" She shrilled, Javier chuckled.

"Of course I am." And with a smirk he walked away.

Harry let his eyes rove around the room, taking in the sights of his new team mates socializing with each other. There was a rugged looking Canadian Auror who was chugging a can off muggle beer, though where he got it was anyone's guess. In the corner He spotted a Chinese witch with long hair that was down to her knees talking animatedly with an Australian wizard, and sitting in the lotus position with his eyes shut and a peaceful expression on his face was a Japanese wizard. 

"I've heard of him." Ron exclaimed after seeing where Harry was looking. "That's Ryu Quing-Long." 

"Who?" Harry too, had heard the name before but he couldn't place where. 

"Ryu Quing-Long." Ron repeated. "He's a legend, one of the best duelists in the world. He can use two wands at once, you know."

"So can I." 

"Not like him mate, you use one then use the other, him, he can fire off two different spells at the exact same time."

"No way." Harry wondered if Ron was pulling his leg. "How does he say two incantations at once?" 

"He doesn't." Ron explained. "Doesn't need to. In fact, from what they say, no one's ever heard him say a word at all."

Harry still wasn't sure what do make of that, so he made a non-committal grunt. And pulled himself to his feet. "I think I'll go check out my quarters. Be back in a minute."

He walked through the door leading to their rooms. He saw that each room had a name plate emblazoned on the front as well as which country the owner represented. Harry read them as he walked past

Ami Miazuki- China

Ryu Quing-Long- Japan

Michael Asher- Canada

Javier Ramirez- Mexico

Fleur Delacour- France

Jack Randall- Australia

Viktor Krum- Bulgaria

John and Kara Screibb- United States

Nymphadora Tonks- Britain

Harry paused as he read the name written on the next door. Then he blinked and re-read it. He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, it just wasn't possible. 

Procyon Black- Britain

"No way." Harry breathed.


	2. On The Fly

Chapter 2: On the Fly 

Harry headed down the corridor of the Atlantean barracks that he and the other Guardians had taken up residency. Since the Guardians were an international agency it was decided that their headquarters couldn't be in any one nation. So the not-so-lost city of Atlantis provided perfect location that was secret, hidden from muggles and unclaimed by any one country. 

"Cornish Pixie," Harry muttered to the door to the Redhawk squadron's wing of the building. The door swung open and he headed past the common to the meeting room. He entered the room to find that he was the last to arrive. Collins sat at the head of the table, and nodded to Harry as he took his seat between Ginny and Ryu. 

"Now that you're all here." Collins grunted as he took a massive puff off the cigar in his mouth. "We can begin. Mr. Weasley, if you would."

"Righto." Ron said getting to his feet. "Well the boys and I down in R&D have come up with something." He picked up a long thin case and banged it onto the table. "That I think you guys are going to like." The case clicked open and a sleek, midnight black broom floated serenely out of the case and hovered a few inches above the table. The assembled witches and wizards oohed and ahhed appreciatively, if not a little sarcastically.

"Allow me to introduce you to the Guardian's new steed, the T-117 Tempest, perfectly balanced and aerodynamically honed to perfection. Zip to eighty in ten seconds." 

"Vhat's the big deal?" Viktor scoffed. "My Hurricane can do the same thing." The hooked nosed Bulgarian was eyeing the shadow-colored broom with more than a little skepticism.

"That's all well and good, Mister Krum." Ron smirked. "But can your Hurricane match a top speed of two-hundred and fifty miles an hour?" Ron was now struggling to suppress the grin he had at the sight of the thirteen slack-jawed faces around him. 

"Are you crazy?" Harry cried. "Nobody can survive speeds like that on a broom." 

"Oh come on Harry, give your old mate a little more credit than that. Once the broom reaches any speed above ninety-five miles an hour a built in _Protego_ shield charm activates, protecting the rider from any extreme wind velocity." 

Now he had them impressed. "Also." The redhead continued, "The black diamond polish renders it nearly unbreakable."

"Nearly?" Procyon wondered, an eyebrow cocked quizzically. 

"Well, one never knows." Ron muttered with a shrug. He grasped the broom in his hand and with a twist of the handle, pulled the brush into the broomstick and collapsed it down to a foot long. "For easy transportation." He explained. 

"Ron, I daresay I think you have a winner here." Tonks said, shaking her shaggy ocean blue hair out of her eyes. 

"Ah but you haven't seen the best part yet." 

" Zhere's more?" Fleur blinked and leaned forward expectantly. 

"Oh you'd better believe it." Ginny muttered with a roll of her eyes. "He wouldn't shut up about this part." 

Choosing to ignore his sister, Ron instead took the collapsed broom in one hand and pointed it straight at Harry. He grinned at the look on his best friend's face then, _"Accio glasses!" _The glasses zipped right off Harry's face and into Ron's outstretched hands. And if the Guardians thought they'd been surprised before. It was nothing on how they were feeling now. 

"You... turned that broom into a wand?" Asher was absolutely bugged eyed. Ron was almost intolerably smug with himself. After all, this had been his project. He was very pleased to have it all gone so well. 

"It wasn't easy, but we've been working with some of the finest wand making families in the world; Ollivander, Gregorovitch, Romanoff, Periwinkle... I'm particularly proud of the core." He handed Harry his glasses back. 

"Why?" Ami asked the hundred-dollar question. "What did you use?"

"Well, in order to create a wand this big it took some pretty powerful stuff. No ordinary Phoenix feather would do it, you know?" Harry thought that he probably wouldn't consider a phoenix ordinary by any means, but he kept this to himself. 

"So we had to use something extraordinary. Like the tail feather of a Golden Phoenix, the feathers of a Nimbus Pegasus, the hair of a Black Unicorn and the heartstrings of a Tiamat Dragon." 

Jack clutched at his chest dramatically. "Hang on a bit mate, I don't think my heart can take so many shocks at once." 

"Where on Earth did you find such rare creatures?" Kara asked "Especially a Tiamat, I heard they live miles underground."

"It wasn't easy, but without the combined resources of several Ministries, it could have been a lot harder. The point is, we did find them and now we have a fairly good breeding stock to keep us supplied in order to make more of these brooms."

"Wait a minute." Harry interjected as a thought occurred to him. "No ordinary wood can hold that kind of magic, it would've exploded. What exactly are these brooms made out of?" 

"Oh, nothing special," Ron said coolly, "Just an Archavia tree." 

At this Jack clutched at his chest and dramatically fell out of his chair. Collins stood up and glanced down at the Aussie. "That's enough now, mister Randall."

"Where did you find a Life Tree?" John asked his murky white eyes wide. 

"We've been growing several of them nearby, and watered by a Magic Font no less." They were all struck dumb, the sheer magical power represented in that broom was ... staggering. 

Harry asked what they were all thinking, "So, when do we get to take them out for a spin?"

Collins got to his feet, the smoke from his cigar wreathing his face. "Precisely what I was thinking, Potter." He swept out of the room and the rest were left to follow in his wake. He led the Redhawk squadron into a massive room which, once the lights had been lit, was revealed to be an indoor Quidditch pitch. 

"Excellent!" Harry grinned at Ron. 

"One of the best ways to get used to a new broom, Quidditch." Collins puffed "However, since this is an Auror facility, we have to make things rough on you." 

Harry cocked an eyebrow, how could Quidditch possibly be any more rough? It must've been something because Collins actually grinned, a little evilly if Harry wasn't mistaken. 

Ron walked over to a large locker and threw the door open, instantly thirteen of the new Tempest brooms came flying out of it and floated over to the group, each one stopping in front of one of them. Ron already had his in his hands. 

"They've each been keyed for one of you and will only work for you. Eventually everyone in the project will have one of these brooms, just in case we need to escape the island quickly, but since they were my design-" Ron puffed his chest out proudly. "We get the first batch of them." 

Harry reached out and took hold of the broom. It was absolutely flawless in design, well, as far as he could tell anyway. He let go of the broom and it floated horizontally about two feet of the ground, a perfect height to mount. 

"All right. You all know how Quidditch is played, but suffice it to say, Auror quidditch is just a little different. We've devised new rules to challenge each and every position. He gave his wand a little wave and a quidditch ball crate appeared out of thin air. He kicked the top open and they could all see the quaffle and the snitch and three bludgers.

... Wait a minute. "Why are there three bludgers?" Jack wondered eyeing the three black spheres straining to escape their harnesses.

"Makes the game more interesting." Collins said with a wink. "But first, let's get you into teams." He reached into the case and withdrew four Beater bats. "Hmm... Tonks, Black you'll be beaters for team One." He tossed them each a bat. "Ryu and Jack team two." The Aussie caught his bat with a grin, and Ryu did the same without a word, of course that's because he did everything without a word. 

"Ginny, John and Kara, Chasers, team one. Ramirez, Ami and Fleur, chasers for team two." 

"Ron and Michael, you play Keeper, and that leaves Viktor and Harry to play seeker." 

"Well there's a bloody surprise." Ron muttered to Ginny out of the corner of his mouth. 

"Wait a minute jefe." Javier shook his head. "What's up with these teams?" 

"Whatever do you mean Ramirez?" Collins asked with a cocked eyebrow. 

"Well, what is this? Britain and the U.S against the rest of the world?"

"Isn't it always that way?" Jack said with a laugh. "Who cares? Let's play."

"You mentioned some rule changes?" Tonks prompted, in the hopes of getting on with the exercise. 

"Oh not really rule changes per se', we've just added a few extra elements." 

"You mean besides the extra bludger." Black muttered.

"Precisely." Collins said with a smirk. He pointed his wand at the six goalposts, immediately the goal hoops began to slide up and down on their posts. 

"Oh that's just bloody fantastic." Ron muttered. "As if three hoops wasn't enough to watch."

"Welcome to the Auror Corps mate." Harry grinned at his friend. "If things are tough, we make `em harder for the fun of it." 

"Brilliant Harry." Ron said sarcastically.

Collins continued with his speech while he took the quaffle out of the box and tossed it lightly to John. "Hang on to that for a second would ya?"

"Erm," John looked warily at his C.O. "...Okay."

"Now the Quaffle, well let's just say that if you don't pass it in five seconds-" John suddenly let out a cry of pain and dropped the ball, they all could see his hands smoking slightly. "-It'll electrify itself. This in no way means that you have to pass, you could hang on to the ball and deal with the voltage. This is known as `Riding the Lightning.'"

"That's twisted." Ginny said, wide eyed. 

"That's the point, luv." Jack said with a wicked grin as he threw his arm around Ginny's shoulder. "But I suppose it's not too late for you to back out if you're scared."

Ginny turned on him eyes flashing. "Who you calling scared, kangaroo rustler?"

Jack held up his hands. "All I was saying is Quidditch isn't a sport for a Florence Nightingale."

Ron was about to give him a piece of his mind. When Harry and John pulled him back. "Hang on a second, you won't want to miss this." John muttered in his ear. 

"Oh really?" Ginny glared as she whipped out her wand _"Nox Occulis!" _A jet of purple light shot out of Ginny's wand and straight into Jack's eyes.

"Bloody Hell!" Jack shouted. "I can't see! What'd you do that for?" 

"So you couldn't see me do this!" And Ginny struck.

Javier winced. "Ooh, damn! Right in the cahones." 

_"Finite Incantatem." _Ginny muttered, and Jack could see again... if his eyes weren't screwed shut in pain. 

Ron smirked in a bemused sort of way. "That'll teach him to test her temper."

"No doubt." John agreed. "That's one hell of a sister you got there."

"Right, not that that wasn't extremely amusing, but let's all give Jack a chance to fish around his ribcage for his er... pride, shall we? Besides this is important." Collins once again reached into his case and removed what looked like two bludgers made of amethyst with glowing red cores. "These are called Stingers, and they may look like a couple of fancy bludgers but trust me, these things are far more annoying. 

Like Bludgers, these things fly around the field, attacking players indiscriminately, and like Bludgers the beaters can smack these things around. However, and this is the fun part, these suckers can cast magic spells."

"What?!" Fleur snapped. "Isn't zat a little dangerous?"

"Well, they're not able to cast anything major. Mostly just schoolyard curses. However their major annoyance lies in their ability to reflect and absorb magic nearby them." 

"And finally, to royally screw the Seekers...?" John prompted, because he knew that was what was next.

"And for the seekers, we've got a surprise." Collins said as though he hadn't heard John, and reached into the case, behind the bludgers and took out what looked like three golden marbles, each the size of a walnut, and each with a pair of gossamer wings. "Gentlemen," He said to Viktor and Harry, "Could you tell me what these are?" 

"They are Golden Snitches, obviously." Krum said with a scowl. 

"No, this one is a Snitch." He held one of them in his left hand. "These," He rolled the other two in his palm until their undersides were showing, where they could see that each had a small red dot. "Are called Sneaks. And they're absolutely worthless if you catch them."

"So all that glitters is not gold. Got that Harry?" Kara said with a nudge. Harry grinned. 

"Got it. Let's play." 

Next thing any of them knew the doors leading into the stands burst open and all the rest of the Squadrons in Guardian packed into the stands until they had a full house. 

"Whoa whoa, whoa." Asher looked around in a panic. "What's this?" 

"A bit of an exhibition. To show off the broom's capabilities. Now, if you guys don't mind, I'll be up in the announcer's booth." He turned to go, but then turned back. 

"I almost forgot." He waved his wand and The Brits and Yanks were dressed in Quidditch robes of red and blue and the Internationals in green and yellow. 

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN" Collins' magically enhanced voice rang out through the stadium. "WELCOME TO TODAY'S MATCH-UP. IN THE BLUE AND RED WE HAVE, REPRESENTING BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, WEASLEY, BLACK, TONKS, SCREIBB, SCREIBB, WEASLEY AND POTTER!" Harry and his team mounted their brooms and lifted into the air where they began to circle the pitch. 

"AND REPRESENTING THE REST OF THE WORLD IN THE GREEN AND YELLOW: ASHER, RAMIREZ, RANDALL, DELACOUR, MIAZUKI, QUING-LONG AND KRUM!" Those dressed in green and yellow soared into the air to join the other team as they zipped around the pitch for a moment before both teams took up starting positions. 

In a second the Quaffle was launched into the air and the other eight balls flew into the air and began to soar around the pitch, the Sneaks and Snitch were soon lost to sight. Meanwhile Ginny had swooped down and snatched the Quaffle and began zooming down the pitch toward the opposing goals, mentally ticking off the seconds in her head. As soon as she got to four she chucked the Quaffle in a sideways pass to John, who caught it and pulled his broom into a vertical ascension. He looked back to see that Ramirez was following him in the climb, so John threw the Quaffle over his shoulder, it dropped straight down past a surprised Javier and right into the hands of Kara who'd been waiting to shoot it straight past Asher and into the goal. 

"AND THE SCREIBBS PULL OFF A PERFECTLY EXECUTED `STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN' PLAY TO PUT THE RED TEAM IN AN EARLY LEAD OF TEN-NOTHING."

Fleur took possession of the Quaffle and led the attack towards the Red goal, Procyon immediately pelted a bludger in her direction, which she pulled into a barrel roll to avoid, but unfortunately this caused her to drop the Quaffle. She was swearing heavily in French as Ginny swooped in and snatched the ball a few millimeters from the ground. 

Jack flew up next to Ramirez as the two of them sped after Ginny to try and retake the Quaffle, "Watch out for that Ginny." Jack shouted over the sound of the wind in their ears. "She's one crazy Sheila!"

"Ah you're just mad because she re-arranged your family jewels" Ramirez laughed as he sped ahead and pulled up alongside Ginny, reaching out and attempting to wrench the Quaffle from her grasp, Ginny wasn't making it easy and soon the found themselves in a high-speed mid-air tug-o-war. Unfortunately neither of them were paying attention to the time and next thing either of them knew sparks and lightning were dancing up their arms. 

"AND THERE GOES THE LIGHTNING!" Collins voice rang out from the announcer's booth as his unending color commentary continued. "CAN THESE TWO CHASERS MANAGE TO RIDE THE LIGHTNING LONG ENOUGH TO TAKE THE QUAFFLE?"

That particular decision was taken out of their hands by Tonks, who aimed a perfect bludger strike at the pair of them that expertly knocked the Quaffle out of their hands and towards the Red goal. Fortunately Ron was quick and managed to catch the ball before an embarrassing score had been made. 

"You couldn't have launched it in the OTHER DIRECTION?" He shouted as Tonks flew by.

"Sorry Ron!" She shouted back. There was a collective gasp as both teams' seekers suddenly took a steep dive towards the ground... at opposite ends of the field. Harry squinted against the wind and focused on the glint of gold that was directly in front of him. He stretched out his left hand while keeping his right gripped tightly on his broomstick. "Just... a little... further." His teeth gritted and ...There! His fingers closed around the pesky little golden ball. He took a glance at it though and immediately threw it away in disgust. "Damn bloody Sneaks!" He grunted, he was mollified slightly buy the fact that Krum had had the same luck he had. He looked, if it were possible, even more disgruntled than Harry was. 

Meanwhile Fleur was once again attempting to get a drop on Ron for a score. It looked for a moment like she was just going for a straight shot on him, which Ron was more than ready for. Ron didn't realize that the hoops had moved behind him, so he was totally unprepared for Fleur to toss the Quaffle up to Ramirez who put a scoring shot into one of the side hoops. Tying the score up at ten apiece. 

Kara took the Quaffle for the red team and led the charge towards the hoops on the other end. Jack, obviously hoping to catch her unawares pelted the Bludger straight at the back of her head. It looked like he might succeed too, but at the last second a Shield charm formed a protective bubble around her and the Bludger bounced off harmlessly. 

Unfortunately the Stinger that Ryu sent after it stripped away he shield, and a second Bludger hit it's mark and struck Kara in the small of her back. She bit her lip in pain, but managed to keep hold of the Quaffle and keep flying. She also noticed Fleur, Ami and Javier were keeping a close tail on her, so she Quickly passed it to John who was coming towards her, and kept flying in the opposite direction.

"What the...?" Ramirez pulled his broom into a tight turn as he suddenly realized the Quaffle was heading the other way. Just as soon as the three Chaser's had turned around, the saw Ginny coming back towards them, and now she had the Quaffle. 

"WOW! IT LOOKS LIKE THE RED TEAM IS PULLING A LITTLE THREE-CARD MONTE DOWN ON THE PITCH, THE GREEN CHASERS HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON." 

The red chasers were nothing more than a blur as they passed the quaffle between them and the green team was hard pressed to discern exactly where it was now. The three chasers were bearing down on the goal-posts, Asher was circling the three rings nervously as he had no idea where the ball was nor which hoop it was going to attempt to pass through. He had only seconds to decide. 

Suddenly he saw John cock his arm back for a throw. John had only just gotten his throw off before all three bludgers came pelting at them, one a piece. It was too late though; John had gotten his shot off just in the nick of time. The shot looked like it had gone wild for a second, then Asher watched with mouth agape as another scarlet clad uniform swooped in from behind the goalposts, grabbed the Quaffle and dunked it into the left hoop. 

"I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!" Collins was positively jumping from excitement. "THE RED SEEKER HAS JUST SCORED A GOAL! THAT'S RIGHT, HARRY POTTER HAS JUST SCORED TEN POINTS FOR THE RED TEAM. I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT HAPPEN BEFORE!" 

John flew up besides Asher and shot him a grin. "In Three-Card Monte, you always look for the fourth card." And then he sped off to rejoin the game. 

"AMI MIAZUKI TAKES THE QUAFFLE FOR THE GREEN TEAM. AND LOOK AT HER FLY! I HAVEN'T SEEN FLYING LIKE THAT SINCE IRELAND'S KELLY MORAN BACK IN `94" Ami's flying style could almost be described as ... near suicidal. She kept the Quaffle clutched close to her, and every time her five seconds were up, she would toss the Quaffle into the air briefly and catch it. There was always no one near her to pass too, indeed none of the other chasers on her team were insane enough to try and keep up with her as it was. She pulled her broom up and up, until she was soaring near the roof of the stadium.

She stopped there for an instant, glancing around for an instant, she maneuvered her body until she was standing on the broom, then pulled into a steep dive that was worthy of a seeker. So there she was, standing upright on a diving broom, looking very much like a muggle snowboarder. As she reentered normal playing height she started dodging and weaving between the other players and bludgers, but she wasn't getting any nearer to the goal. It was almost like she was looking for something. 

Ami saw a bludger flying at her out of the corner of her eye. She waited until the absolute last second, and then leaped off her broom and over the bludger. She easily regained her standing position on her broom as it passed. 

It seemed after that that she had found what she'd been looking for, she turned and began zooming straight towards a Stinger. She lined the point of her broomstick perfectly with the blue-purple orb. 

_"Wingardium Leviosa!"_ She shouted and a pure white ball of light shot out of her broomstick and straight at the Stinger The Stinger sensing magic nearing it, put up a protective red barrier which reflected the spell right back at Ami. 

Ami smiled as if that was exactly what she'd wanted to happen. Before the spell could hit her she tucked the quaffle, which was just starting to shoot off sparks, between her knees, and grabbed the hem of her robes in both her hands. The spell hit and she went flying up, up, up, off her broom, after she had reached a considerable height, gravity took over and she began to fall back towards earth, her long hair streaming out behind her like a midnight banner. She spread her arms wide and the cloak of her robes became like a makeshift parachute. She was able to control her descent slightly and, much to Ron's dismay, she was heading straight for the Red goals. 

Ron debated with himself for a moment. Then decided that ten points was not worth getting bowled over by a human missle. He dove out of the way as Ami shot towards him, arms outstretched, holding a sparkling Quaffle between them. As soon as she drew level with the goal, she threw the ball into the hoop, grabbed onto to the hoop itself with both hands. Her momentum swung her up and back through the hoop, at which point she grabbed onto the pole and slid on it back down to the ground. Her broom flew down to meet her, at which point she calmly remounted, normally this time.

"Great." John muttered out of the corner of his mouth to his wife. "We've got an adrenaline junkie in our squad."

"You gotta admit though," Kara replied, with a mischievous grin. "That was really cool." 

"I REALLY HOPE NONE OF YOU BLINKED DURING THAT BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER SEE A MOVE LIKE THAT AGAIN!" Collin's magically amplified voice rang out through the stadium. "THE SCORE HAS NOW BEEN TIED ONCE AGAIN AT TWENTY POINTS A PIECE." 

The use of Ami's levitating charm seemed to remind them all that their brooms also functioned as wands. Soon there were all sorts of spells flying around the field left and right. 

_"Accio Quaffle!" _John cried effectively stealing the ball away from Fleur which was then blasted out of his hands by Javier's _Impedimenta_ spell. 

"AND THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS WHY WANDS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN REGULATION QUIDDITCH MATCHES. I'D ALSO LIKE TO REMIND THE PLAYERS THAT IF THEY DO ANYTHING STUPID, THEY WILL NOT LIKE THE CONSEQUENCES." 

John flashed a grin. "YES JOHN, I'M ESPECIALLY TALKING TO YOU."

Harry was still flying above the game looking for the Snitch. Every time he'd seen even a glimpse of it, it had flown away too fast or, it had been one of those blasted Sneaks. But this time he'd spotted all three of the tricky little blighters, the only problem now was deciding which of them was the real Snitch. 

"That one Harry!" John shouted pointing at one of the little golden balls. Harry, having nothing else to go on, and slightly relieved at having the problem taken out of his hands, sped off towards it. Krum wasn't about to let him have it so easily however, and dove after him.

Harry was soaring a few meters above the Snitch and was just to dive down and grab it when he heard Krum's voice bellow from somewhere behind him, _"Expelliarmus!" _And the next thing Harry knew he was falling in mid-air as his broom suddenly got jerked out from under him. He fell for a moment, before he regained his wits and transformed. Then he flapped his wings once and continued to dive after the Snitch. In a few seconds he was able to stretch out his talons and grasp the golden ball firmly in one claw. 

You see, a few years after Harry had graduated from Hogwarts he decided to carry on what he considered a family tradition and became an Animagus, (although he broke tradition slightly and actually registered with the Ministry. ...It would've looked bad on his Auror record otherwise.) Now he was winging his way down to the ground of the pitch in the form of a Peregrine Falcon, with the snitch in one talon, he saw the rest of the squadron waiting for him, now that the game was over. 

He circled the group and Ron grinned up at him. "Good catch Harry. Probably your best yet." 

Harry let out a loud screech and dropped the now docile snitch into Collins' hands as he was putting all the balls away. People were starting to clear out of the stadium, now that the game had been finished. 

"Well done all of you." Collins said as he puffed on a new cigar. Harry circled once and then transformed back into himself, landing rather ungracefully back on the ground. Ginny helped him to his feet with wry smile and a roll of the eyes. 

"Now then, get yourselves cleaned up and report to the meeting room in half an hour." Collins grunted again as smoke wreathed his head. "Dismissed." 

Ginny gave Harry's side a nudge as the group headed back to the Redhawk's quarters. "That was a nice catch there, Fledge."

Harry grinned at her. "Well, thank you very much." Someone said the password and all fourteen of them tromped into the commons and then off to their personal quarters to get changed. 

A half an hour later they were all sitting in the meeting room waiting for Collin's to begin. He took another puff on his cigar, cleared his throat and looked each of them in the eye before beginning. 

"Right, here's how it's going to work. We don't expect you to spend the rest of your lives here in Atlantis, of course. So tomorrow you will be allowed to return home. However, Each squadron will be required to spend one week here on base each month, in fact at any given time there will be three squadrons on duty. The other commanders and I have worked out a schedule for the next month which will be owled to you all soon. Now, since obviously you cannot Apparate or Disapparate from Atlantis, we've created special Portkeys for you all to use." He withdrew a number chains, each with a small pendant hanging from it, in the shape of a hawk gripping a sword and passed them out to each of them. "They can be activated at any time, but only by a member of Guardian. If you are needed to report to the base it will grow warm for a moment, and you will have approximately three minutes to activate the Portkey before it activates itself. 

"Now I have a few other things to issue you all. The first thing is your mission kits. They are a little more advanced than the kits you received from your country divisions. They contain the following items." He read off a list as Ron handed the kits out. 

"Each of you has an invisibility cloak, a magical lock picker, magical flight goggles, a time turner, an endless rope and an extendable ear, which were invented by Mr. Weasley's brothers I believe. Included also are a number of potions, including three doses of Veritaserum, Polyjuice and several sense enhancing drafts. Jack since you're the team's Legillimens, yours also contains a portable Pensieve to record the thoughts you see in others' heads. This is just a basic over view of what are in these kits, other items maybe added later as circumstances require. However, that is not necessary at this time. Dismissed.


	3. A Bit of Deus Ex

Chapter three: Deus Ex 

Harry woke up, for the first time in a week, in his own bed in his London flat. Yawning profusely he pulled himself out of said bed and got dressed. He noticed the Portkey pendant hanging from his neck, thankfully there was no response from it. After all, he had just left the Guardian compound, he'd hate to have to go back so soon. He stepped over to his special seven-chambered trunk, identical to the one Mad-Eye spent the majority of Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts inside of. 

He was about to open it when a blaze suddenly lit in his fireplace and Ron's head poked out from the flames. "Alright there Harry?" His best friend greeted. 

"Hey Ron. What's up?" Harry walked away from the trunk and over to the fireplace so that he could better talk to Ron. 

"Oh, Mum's having everybody over for lunch and she wanted me to call over and invite you. Hermione's going to be there too." 

"Yeah, that sounds great. You can tell your mum I'll be over there in about half an hour."

"Great. See you then Harry." In another flash of fire, Ron's head disappeared. Harry went back over to his trunk and closed the lid. He had been planning on doing some maintenance to his old Firebolt broom, which he kept in there. But now he had something better to do. After all, the Weasleys (Along with Remus, Sirius and Hermione) had been the closest thing to family Harry had ever had. He still remembered that summer when he was seventeen that Fred and George had tried to show him that by magically dyeing his hair red. 

On the one hand he had found it kind of funny, at least until he realized how much he looked like Percy. Then he wasn't quite so keen on it anymore. At any rate He'd always looked forward to Mrs. Weasley's cooking, and that alone was more than enough reason to go to the Burrow that afternoon. 

So at exactly quarter to noon he Apparated to the Burrow. Immediately Ron and Hermione rushed out to greet him. 

"Hey Ron, long time no see." He joked and Ron rolled his eyes. 

"Right Harry." He muttered rolling his eyes, as Harry gave Hermione a greeting hug. 

"How are things at Hogwarts?" He asked her as the three of them walked up the driveway towards the Burrow. 

"Oh they're fine." She muttered evasively. 

"Hermione, you're not still nervous about teaching are you?" Ron questioned, a bemused smirk on his face. "You've been student teaching for four years now."

"Well yes, but Arithmancy's a complicated subject. What if I forget something? I'd hate for the students to mess up because I forgot to teach them something important."

"She's totally mental." Ron muttered to Harry as an aside. "She knew that stuff better by fifth year than even Professor Vector did." 

"I heard that, and that's not the point! Add that to the fact that I have to take over as head of Gryffindor after Professor McGonagall decided she had gotten too, um, on in years, to do that and teach and be deputy headmistress all at once and well…" 

"Hermione, relax. You'll do fine." Harry reassured her. "I promise." 

"So, who've they got teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year anyway?" Ron wondered. 

Hermione made a disgusted face. "You won't believe this but, Malfoy's teaching it." 

"Excellent!" Ron grinned. 

"Excellent?" Harry gaped at his red headed friend. "How, exactly is that excellent?" 

"Well," Ron replied with a shrug. "I mean it does suck a bit that he's teaching, but you know how Defense teachers are, with the curse and everything. Maybe something gruesome will happen to him. Maybe he'll, I don't know, get savaged by a Manticore in the Dark Forest or something." 

"Ron!" Hermione nudged him sharply with her elbow.

"Well, between Malfoy and Snape I don't particularly relish Gryffindor's prospects for the house cup. In fact I'll be surprised if there's any points left by the end of the first term." Harry replied. "I don't care if Malfoy did turn coats against Voldemort at the end, he's still a spoiled, arrogant son of a bi-" 

"Well let's go and see what Mrs. Weasley's cooked for lunch then shall we?" Hermione asked brightly as they entered the Burrow's front door. 

"Oh, hello Harry dear. How's your summer been?" Mrs. Weasley asked as she bustled about the kitchen. 

"Oh fairly ordinary." Harry replied trying to suppress a grin, as he wasn't allowed to say anything about Guardian after all. 

"How's lunch coming mum?" Ron asked peeking into one of the pots before Mrs. Weasley smacked him on the back of his head with a wooden spoon.

"Lunch isn't quite ready yet." She said, shooing them all out of the kitchen, Ron grumbling darkly as he went, rubbing the small lump on his head. The three decided to see what Fred, George and Ginny were up to that was making so much noise out in the back yard. Turns out they were testing the latest stock of Weasley's Wildfire Whiz-Bangs. Harry, Ron and Hermione arrived just in time to see a massive explosion of red and gold sparks that formed into the Gryffindor Lion, along with the words "GO GRYFFINDOR!" That flashed in red and gold. 

"Hey there Harry!" George shouted and waved. "What do you think? Hogwarts Pride series. They're meant to be used during Quidditch games. We've got one for every house." 

"Even Slytherin?" Harry asked with a grin as the Lion gave off a deafening roar.

"Even Slytherin." Fred replied. "We may not like them, but we'll gladly take their money." He said with a wink. "Besides, the Serpent's the most expensive anyway."

"Oh don't look at us like that Hermione. It's only the most expensive because the silver sparks are hard to create." George said with a grin to the withering look Hermione shot at both of them.

"Right…" Was all she said.

"Dumbledore's already arranged to buy enough of each house to use for the next four years. He says he plans to launch off the colors of whatever house wins each game. He said he might also use them at the end of the year feast, too." Ginny added with a smirk. 

"Always said that Dumbledore was a smart man." George said as he lit of a Ravenclaw House firework, "Smart, and able to determine good, quality products."

Hermione shook her head and rolled her eyes in a very exasperated way. Fortunately she was saved having to comment by Mr. Weasley calling them to eat in the garden. They paused to watch the bronze Eagle of Ravenclaw swoop around the yard, trailing blue sparks as it went, before heading off to lunch. Looking at the giant pyrotechnic raptor circling in the sky, Ron was suddenly reminded of something.

"Harry, I've been meaning to ask you something. When did you become an Animagus?" 

"A couple of weeks ago." Harry muttered with a shrug. "I'd would've told you guys. I just sort of forgot about it. I felt it was something I had to do, on my own you know?"

"I knew about it." Ginny offered, helpfully.

"Wait, why'd you tell her and not us?" Hermione asked with an arched brow.

"In order to be legal about it I had to get a physical done by a trained healer. To make sure I was healthy enough to pull off the transformation." Harry shrugged. "I figured why not just have Ginny do it?"

Ron shot him a strange look. "Just how complete was this physical anyway?" He asked. Ginny decided to head off the over-protective brother mode Ron was gearing into.

"Ron would you relax? I'm a bloody HEALER for gods sakes. It was purely professional."

Ron nodded, like he understood. Still… "Maybe someday you could teach me how to do it, Harry. Being able to turn into an animal would be pretty cool." 

"It is. Especially the Falcon. Flying without a broom, you have no idea how cool that is." 

They entered the garden to see that Bill and Charlie had laid out a couple of picnic tables and they were now heavily burdened with a lot of food. Once they sat down to the table, all talk of Animagi vanished as they began to eat and talk of more normal things… like Quidditch.

"Harry I honestly can't believe you'd say such a thing!" Ron gasped looking highly offended. "What do you mean you think the… _Tornadoes_ of all teams, are going to take the championship this year?"

"I just think they stand a good chance." Harry said with a smirk. It was fun to rile up Ron like this, and so easy. "They've got Chad Williams playing Keep this year."

"Doesn't matter. The Cannons will take it, never fear." 

"No fear of that." Fred scoffed. "As they haven't won in twenty-five years."

Ron looked visibly put off.

"Personally, my money's on the Harpies." Ginny said as she took a bite of chicken.

"The _ Harpies _Ron choked back a laugh. "Sorry Ginny, but there's no chance of that happening." 

"Oh you're one to talk of 'no chance' Ron." Ginny shot back. "Why, exactly, have they no chance?" 

Ron rolled his eyes. "Well, for starters they're all-" He stopped abruptly, then went back to eating,

"All what Ron?" Ginny wondered with a cocked eyebrow. 

"Nothing." Ron muttered, poking at his potato salad. 

"You were going to say 'because they're all women' weren't you Ron?" Hermione supplied with a very bland expression.

"Er, no… no, I wasn't" Ron said in a very unconvincing tone. 

Ginny looked like she was about to launch into a very long tirade, when suddenly she winced in pain. And Harry knew why, because the exact same thing was happening to him and Ron. At that exact moment their Guardian pendants had suddenly grown very hot. Almost to the point of causing a burn. 

Ron cleared his throat. "Uh, sorry Mum, we got to go, Harry and me" Ginny kicked him under the table. "Oh yeah, uh, Ginny too. It's a Ministry thing we sort of forgot to do. We'll be back as soon as possible. Promise." 

Before Mrs. Weasley or any of the others could raise a protest Harry and the two redheads had bolted around to the other side of the house. 

"I hope it's not anything serious." Ginny panted as they prepared to use their portkeys. 

"If it wasn't serious they wouldn't be summoning us, would they?" Harry muttered grimly as he disappeared.

They reappeared what seemed like a second later in the Redhawk Common. The rest of the team was either already there or appeared a few seconds afterwards. Collins was already there, looking grim and Harry could here alarm sirens going off all over the compound. 

"What's the situation?" Jack asked as he rubbed sleep out of his eyes. "We're not under attack or anything are we?" 

"No." Collins looked haggard. "There was a sudden rush of magic energy down by the fount, it caused tremors all over the island." He was speaking very quickly. "All squads have been summoned and put on damage control. We're being sent down to the pens to get control of the situation down there." 

Ron suddenly looked very pale. "The Archavia trees!" He cried. "We can't let anything happen to them."

Collins nodded. "Exactly. Now get going!" The fourteen sorcerers turned and bolted out of the door and down to the creature pens where the Magic fount was. They could hear many shouts, both human and animal, coming through the door. To the Menagerie.

Harry charged out of the compound and towards the ranch-like ring of stables with his wand drawn and at the ready. The first thing he saw was the fount itself in the center of the ring of barns and stables. It was normally a crystal clear pool that was smooth as glass. Now the entire thing was boiling over. 

Harry turned in time to see a dragonet shoot a ball of fire out of it's mouth and hit one of the wranglers in the chest. He screamed in pain and fell to the ground.

Harry pointed his wand and a jet of cold water shot out of the end and doused the flames on the wrangler's body. "Ginny! You'd better tend to him quick!" Ginny nodded and dragged the wrangler away from the chaos. 

"Alright people let's move!" Asher snapped into action. "Tonks, Ramirez and Ryu, get anybody who's going to be under foot out of here. The rest of you, see if you can get these damn beasts under control!" 

All around them were a stampede of panicking magical creatures. Nimbus Pegasus were especially skittish. A number of the brightly colored winged horses had already taken to the air. 

"Easy Perseus, Easy!" Ron was trying desperately to calm an onyx colored Unicorn, who was trying just as hard to run Ron through with his lance-like horn. The equine screamed defiantly and reared up on it's hind legs and was about to drive it's horn through Ron's head, when John jumped in, knocked Ron out of the way and blocked the horn with a long gleaming sword with a blade made out of what looked like polished diamond. 

"Go Ron!" He shouted. "I've got him!" Ron nodded and ran off to help to calm some of the other creatures. 

Harry meanwhile, was in his Falcon shape and tearing after one of the Pegasus who'd gone airborne. He'd gotten above one of them and dove, transforming back just in time to land on the creature's back. It neighed loudly and surprise and began wildly bucking trying to throw Harry off. 

_ maybe this wasn't such a good idea. _ Harry thought to himself as he grabbed at the feathers of the horse creature's mane and tried desperately to hang on. 

Fleur was having a comparatively easy time calming the unicorn stallions, through a combination of her femininity and Veela charm. Krum was attempting to stun one of the Chimera into submission, but it's three heads weren't cooperating. 

Ami saw one of the Gorgons galloping haphazardly through the stables and everything else that got in it's way. Unfortunately the blind cloths that the Wrangler's used to keep the Gorgon's stare in check had really become more of a hindrance than a help. She bolted after the bull-like creature and leaped on it's back, hoping to wrestle it to the ground. 

Collins ran up to Ron and asked for a status report. "Harry's up there trying to bring Copernicus back down to the ground, Miazuki's trying to hog-tie Gilgamesh, Ginny's taking care of those that have been gored, maimed or burnt, Kara and John are trying to calm down Perseus. I think I saw Krum tangling with a Chimera, Fleur's working with the Unicorn stallions and I have no idea where everyone else is." 

Collins nodded, then jogged over to Ginny who was quickly bandaging up a woman with a broken leg. "What's the casualties?" He asked as he helped the ragged looking young woman set another busted bone. 

"No one dead, yet." Ginny grunted as she pushed the bone back into place, the woman she was working on bit back a scream. "eleven wounded so far, nothing terribly serious although a few will have to be bed ridden for awhile. Some for as much as a few weeks." 

Collins nodded. "Keep it up Weasley." Then he made his exit. 

Procyon looked nervously at the herd of unicorn that were bearing down on him, horns flashing and hooves pounding. He held his ground and narrowed his eyes, focusing his gaze. Then, with the toe of his left boot, he drew a runic symbol in the sand in front of him. The symbol glowed for a minute and then, at least as far as Procyon Black was concerned, time seemed to slow down to a crawl. Until the unicorns in front of him were no longer galloping madly towards him, but plodding as if they were running though quicksand. He calmly drew his wand, and at a leisurely pace, Stunned each and every one of the creatures.

Harry, still high in the air, blinked. Did he just see what he thought he'd just seen? It looked like Black had taken out his wand and shot off a steady stream of red light, hitting each member of that herd in turn, and then they'd all fallen over. The creature beneath him gave another angry buck and Harry turned his attention back to staying mounted. All thoughts of Procyon Black forgotten, for now. 

Kara had gotten John to back away from the unicorn and had calmed it down herself. John and Ron both had apparently forgotten that Unicorns don't often trust males, and a panicked unicorn least of all. 

Ami had finally succeeded in wrestling the Gorgon down onto the dusty ground. Before the snorting monster could regain it's feet she pointed her wand and long coiling ropes made of metal shot out of the end of it and bound up the creature securely. Then she stunned it for good measure. 

Jack glanced up at Harry and his little aerial rodeo. "That just won't do." He muttered as he glanced around, his eyes landed on a pile of rope and a plan formed in his head. He signaled to Ami, Tonks, Ryu and Ramirez. "Hey, we got to get Potter down from there. That beasts flying like a Willy-Willy." 

"He's fine. We got bigger things to worry about!" Ramirez grunted looking around at the chaos that was still going on.

"I'm in yer boot here, Ramirez. He's going to lose what little control, he's got." He gestured to the rope. "If we all put a lasso or two on that crazy thing we should be have a fair go at pulling it down." 

"I can't throw rope!" Tonks muttered.

"Well, I ain't exactly a champion jackaroo myself but if we don't, Potter's gonna end up in a rum prang he's not going to walk away from, so let's quit grizzling and get in the air!" 

"Do you have any idea what he just said?" Ramirez muttered to Ryu who just shrugged. 

Nevertheless each of them grabbed a length of rope, tied them into lassoes and mounted some of the brooms that were kept in a shed nearby. In a flash they were in the air. Ami immediately stood up on her broom and sped off towards the thrashing Pegasus, twirling her lasso above her head she tossed the rope and it landed squarely around Copernicus' neck. 

Kara looked up then immediately rushed for a broom. She had to get Harry off of that animal before they tried to drag it out of the sky. Things were starting to calm down and the wranglers had pretty much rounded up the other animals. 

Kara was pulled up alongside the creature. "Harry, climb on the broom!"

"No, that's-YAH!- okay I -WHOA!- I have it under control." 

"Harry! Don't be stupid!" Kara shouted. "Get on the br-" suddenly Copernicus made a sharp turn and his wing buffeted Kara and knocked her off her broom.

"KARA!" John shouted as she landed in the middle of the fount with a loud splash. She resurfaced for only a second before her water-heavy robes dragged her back down. John dashed towards the shore stripping his robes off until he was just wearing a pair of jeans He took a leap and dove into the water with barely a ripple. 

John had a second to peer through the murky depths for some sign of his wife, before the magic of the fount struck him like a hammer. He felt it in every nerve ending like lightning coursing through his body. It was flowing through his veins setting his soul on fire. 

_That doesn't matter! _ John shouted to himself, forcing his eyes open. _I have to find Kara!_ It wasn't an option, he had to find her. His brain was rapidly running out of Oxygen, but he had to find her. 

_ I'd known her since we were little kids. We'd gone through grade school together. I first met her when I'd chased off some older kids trying to push her around. Since then she followed me around everywhere. At first I'd sort of just considered her a pest. After all, at that age, what boy wants to hang around with a girl anyway? Eventually though, she wore me down to the point where we'd become friends, best friends. Next thing either of us knew, she was packing her bags for Massachusetts so she could attend the Salem Witches Institute, meanwhile I was staying in Wisconsin so I could attend the Midwestern Academy Shamanism. _

We still kept in touch. We Owled each other at least once a week and visited each other over every break. It was almost like we were still in the same state… almost. 

Kara cast her eyes towards the shimmering barrier that was the surface of the water. It seemed so far away, and it was getting further with each passing second. She was sinking, physically and mentally. She too, felt the magic in the water, but for her it was like ice shards were being plunged into her body. Parts of her were completely numb, others were racked with sharp stabbing pains. 

_John!_ Her mind cried out. _John please, help me!_ But she knew that there was no way he'd ever be able to get her to the surface. Not with her brain going through oxygen deprivation as it was. _looks like he's saved my life one too many times._ She thought with a delirious smirk. 

_"I'm sorry Mrs. Vachter, but your daughter's ailment is very severe." The healer was a balding old man with small, thick wire-frame glasses and lime green robes. He faced my parents and I with a grim look on his face. I started to cry and my hair suddenly started to shoot off sparks._

"What is it?" Father asked

"It's Cardamon's Syndrome." The healer replied. Then, after seeing our confused looks, "It's a very, very rare condition that causes a witch or wizard's magic to… bleed out of them. It can cause magical accidents, like her hair, right now. Unless something is done, she'll be a squib in less than a year." The thought horrified me. I couldn't imagine losing my magic, that meant I'd have to stop going to the Institute, that I'd lose… him.

"So, what can be done?" My mother asked, gripping my hand tightly. 

The Healer hesitated for a moment, as if unsure whether to bring it up. "There is a process, it won't stop her from bleeding her magic, but it will stop her from losing it."

"I… I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"I can't stop her magic from leaving her, but if a person could be found, who was willing to… to link with her… This person, would also take on the disease but instead of their magic bleeding out into the world, they would instead bleed into each other." 

My mother had a dark look in her eyes. "So you're suggesting she join souls with someone?" 

"In a way yes."

John's arms were growing numb but he didn't dare stop swimming down, down, down towards the bottom of the fount. His vision was sliding in and out of focus, and his brain was wandering, but he didn't dare stop. He had to find her. 

_ I remember the day the owl came, that would change my life forever. It was a simple note at first, it cut right to the chase. "John" it read. "I desperately need a favor." And I read on all about her extremely rare blood disease. About how I could help her. How I could save her. I was only thirteen at the time, but I understood exactly what was going to happen. I would irrevocably become part of her, and she, a part of me. It didn't matter. She needed me, that's what mattered._

Kara was fading fast and she struggled to hold on. John was coming she knew it. She could feel it. He'd always been there for her before. 

_It felt weird. Being linked to him, the process was relatively simple, it was an ancient ritual. Arcane in nature, but nothing too complicated. The potion we had to drink, however, tasted horrible. I remember trying hard not to think of what was in it. Stuff I'd never seen before and stuff I hoped never to see again. And our blood, both of ours. It might've been Dark Magic, it might've been illegal even, but I don't regret it. Or what it did. _

Next thing I knew, we were joined. Permanently. It took some adjustment on both our parts. We traded a few personality traits, which took some getting used too. He got the better deal on that, though. It was amazing, we could sense what the other was feeling, if one got hurt the other would know, if blood was involved then both of us were wounded. Alcohol through one affected both, not that we tried that very often, of course.

Kara felt tears in her eyes, though they were quickly swept away by the water. She was going to die down here. She could feel it, she knew to the very pit of her soul. Unless she suddenly met with some divine intervention, she'd be meeting her maker soon. 

_ John… I'm sorry._ Kara felt herself slipping away, her eyes were sliding closed. 

_Don't say that Kara. _Came a voice in her head. Her eyes snapped open again. John was floating down to her level, his eyes were dulled and his face had a bluish tint to it, but it was definitely him.

_wait, what? …John?_

_Kara?_

John's voice was in her head. That was new. _Why aren't we dead yet?_

_ you're not dead because I don't want you dead, yet._ A new voice called out They looked around and saw a bottlenose dolphin swimming towards them. The creature circled them once and with a whirl of water it transformed. 

Where there had been a dolphin before, there was now an elegant looking woman, Tall, with blue green hair all the way down to her waist, that floated around her like a nimbus cloud. Her eyes were clouded in the same way that John's were. Her skin was a pure white and seemed to have a pearl sheen to it. She wore a green dress of the sheerest silk.

"You two can stop holding your breath now." She spoke with a commanding tone. John took a tentative breath, and found that there was air there… somehow. 

"Who are you?" Kara asked, grasping John's hand with her own. 

"For now, you may call me Dee X. Machina." She rolled her eyes. "And as for your next question, I'm not allowing you to die because I'm going to need you, soon."

"I don't understand." Kara's brow was furrowed in confusion.

The women's eye rolled in a derisive manner. "I didn't much expect you to, at this point. Normally We're not allowed to interfere, but he's pretty much shattered the rules, therefore…" 

She trailed off at their blank looks, with an exasperated sigh. "Sometimes I hate dealing with Mortals. At any rate, you've been spared, this time. Rejoice and be glad, drink and be merry blah blah blah. Now if you don't mind, get out." She waved her hand and a current of water caught the both of them and carried them all the way to the surface of the fount, right at the edge, where they collapsed back onto solid ground. 

"They're alive!" Tonks screamed and next thing they knew they were being thrown onto magical stretchers and Ginny was bending over them barraging them with questions. John waited until she was busy dealing with Kara before turning to Harry and Ron. "How the hell long were we underwater?" 

"About two minutes mate. We thought you both were long gone." Ron responded 

"Really? Felt like two hours."

"What happened to you down there?" Harry asked. 

"We saw…" John paused, and thought about it "Nah… there's no way."

"What?" Ron wondered.

"Nothing, just an oxygen-deprivation induced hallucination. Nothing more." At least, John hoped it was.


	4. Curses Old and New

Chapter 4: Curses

_ My_ _god it's boring in here. _John thought to himself as he gazed up at the ceiling of the medical wing. He could hear Ginny off in the supply closet, organizing everything, and he knew Kara was asleep in the bed beside his. He, on the other hand, was feeling extremely restless and wanted out. He couldn't believe Ginny had kept them overnight in here. After all, it wasn't like anything horrible had happened. They'd only nearly drowned and suffered severe oxygen deprivation. What was the big deal?

John sighed. He hated to admit it, but had to admit that if he'd been in Ginny's place he'd have done the same thing. Still, that didn't stop him from being completely and totally bored. 

Luckily, at that moment Harry and Ron decided to pay him a visit. "Oh good, you're awake John." Harry greeted. 

John gave them a little wave. "Hey, what are you two doing here?" By way of answer Harry picked up the gemstone-bladed sword that John had used down in the pens the day before. 

"Ah thanks for bringing it back for me." Harry placed it on the foot of the bed John was in. 

"What exactly is that sword made of?" Ron asked, running a hand along the flat of the faceted blade. 

"That is the Diamond Blade, it's been in my family for eight-hundred years, passed down from father to eldest son. It's blade was forged from the heart-scale of a Korean Diamondback Dragon."

"It's beautiful." Ron commented as he grasped the hilt. 

"It's also cursed." Ron let go of that hilt so fast you'd have thought it was on fire. "Relax Ron, it's only a curse on my family." 

Harry shot him a confused look, "What do you mean? What sort of curse is it?" 

John leaned back against the pillows propped up in his bed. "Well, eight hundred years ago, or so the legend goes, my ancestor was the leader of a particularly savage and brutal tribe of nomads. They were the absolute worst sort of pillagers and plunderers, murderers and thieves you could possibly imagine. Well, one day my great-great-great-whatever grandfather came upon a woman carrying her possessions to the marketplace, one of which was this very sword. My ancestor took one look at that sword, and seeing it's beauty desired it for his own. He demanded it from her, and she refused. So he took the sword from her by force, and killed her with it. 

What my ancestor didn't realize was that this seemingly innocuous woman was a Fateweaver. Before she died, she placed a fate's curse on this sword. First, that my ancestor would have a son, and that son would kill him in the defense of a woman, with the sword. Secondly, that all of his descendants' first born children would be male, and each would be drawn to a woman in need of his protection."

Harry looked thoughtful. "So this curse has been an eight hundred year lesson in Chivalry then?" 

John smirked wryly. "Something like that. After about the fourth or fifth generation, the lesson must started to take effect because it didn't really feel like a curse to us anymore." He glanced over at his wife, still sleeping peacefully. "No, I'm pretty sure the lesson's fairly well set in by now." 

The Halls of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place were dark as a lone figure crept through them. He'd never been here before, but the doorway was always unlocked to wizard's with the right blood in them.

Procyon Black looked around at his family's ancestral home, at his own history, and he hated the sight of it. Procyon had always hoped that the rumors about the kind of wizards his family had produced weren't true, but he could see now that they were. 

He trudged up the stairs and into the family drawing room. There he saw, stuck onto the wall, an old tapestry that was tattered, frayed and faded. It looked like moths, or maybe Doxies had gotten hold of it at some point. Despite this, he could still tell that it was the Black family tree. He noticed the family motto, and smirked sarcastically at it. 

"Toujours Pur." He muttered. "Right. 'Toujours Mal' would be more appropriate." Nevertheless he stepped forward to examine it more closely. His eyes scanned down through the centuries, through names he'd never heard before and couldn't put a face or a history to if he tried. Finally he reached a name he did recognize. Occasionally he would see what looked like a cigarette burn in the cloth, he decided these must have been people who'd been kicked out of the family. "Probably for being decent." He muttered. Then his eyes fell on a name that sparked some interest. 

"Regulus Black." He muttered. "Says here he died twenty five years ago. But that's not right. He disappeared twenty-five years ago, but Voldemort didn't catch up to him until five years later. He was halfway to Berlin by then." He looked again at the tapestry.

"Well, well, well. I'm not even on here. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the family didn't know about dear old Reggie's illegitimate son now, should I?" He paused to consider the tapestry for a moment. Then he pointed his wand at it and a fine gold thread shot out of it and changed the date of Regulus' date of death. Then he embroidered his name, Procyon Black, right below the name of his father." He stepped back to consider his handiwork. He had to admit it looked good, considering he'd never embroidered before. Satisfied that he'd upheld tradition, he promptly raised his wand and blasted the name right back off the tapestry. Having done that, he turned to leave the room. 

He headed down to the kitchen, hoping that the plumbing still worked. He needed a drink of water, he turned on the tap and a lot of muddy brown water splattered into the sink, but after he let it run for a little while he was pleased to see clean water run through the tap. He got a glass from the cupboard and filled it. He sat down at the kitchen table and sipped the water thoughtfully. It didn't take long for his mind to wander. 

_It was his first year at Durmstrang Institute and his Metaphysics teacher Professor Gorbeichev was explaining about Elementalists. _

"In other words, a person who is naturally able to control one of the twelve elements of magic. Can anybody name any of the twelve? Yes, Ms. Volkanov?"

Procyon turned to regard the dark haired young witch as she paused to think before answering. "Earth, Fire Wind and Water." She said. Professor Gorbeichev nodded. 

"Yes, yes, those are the four main elements, can anybody name any others?"

A blonde boy in the row in front of Procyon raised his hand. "Metal, Lightning, Storm, Smoke and Sand."

"Very good. Okay, there's three left. Anybody?"

"Ice?" 

"No, Mr. Capis, that's not one of them."

"Light and Dark." 

"Good, Good and the last one?" 

Procyon raised his hand. He had known them all, but he didn't want to look like he was showing off. "Life." 

"Excellent Mr. Black, Excellent." Gorbeichev continued with the lecture explaining that Elementalists were very rare and usually born to pureblooded families, and (true to Durmstrang's Pureblood Doctrine) the older the family the more likely that an Elementalist would appear in the bloodline. 

"Is it possible for an Elementalist to be born with the ability to control more than one element?" 

"No. That's not possible." That caught Procyon's attention. Obviously his Professor had no idea what he was talking about, not that he was likely to mention this fact. It was never a good idea to demonstrate unique abilities in Durmstrang. There were far too many people who were all too eager to exploit poor gifted fools. 

"Now, those who can control an element have access to certain abilities depending on what that element is. For instance, those controling the Sand element are able to summon a sandstorm." 

Wrong! Procyon thought to himself. Completely wrong, sand magic is the magic of Time.

"And those who can control smoke" Continued the Professor "Are able to turn invisible at will."

No, no, no, no! Smoke is the magic of Dream Control, you fool!

Procyon took another sip of water. Gorbeichev always was an idiot. And despite all his attempts to conceal it, Headmaster Karkaroff eventually found out about Procyon's ability to control the twelve elements. 

_He looked like it was raining Galleons when he caught me practicing. _Procyon thought bitterly. _He was going to use me to become the next Voldemort. In fact he dragged me to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament, hoping to sneak me into the contest despite Dumbledore's precautions. Imagine, a twelve year old in that contest? What an idiot. _

Although, Harry Potter didn't do so bad. Procyon reflected as he drained his glass. _Not bad at all, despite that annoying streak of nobility. That would've gotten him killed in Durmstrang. _

Never a dull moment down Knockturn Alley is there? Draco Malfoy thought to himself as he perused the items in Borgin and Burkes, he paused to look at the Hand of Glory which, even after thirteen years, was still sitting in the dingy old shop. There was small cough behind him and Draco whirled around to see who exactly it was. 

"Ah Young Master Malfoy, a pleasure to see you once more in my humble shop." The smarmy mister Borgin, hunched over in a subservient posture as usual. 

"I'm not so young anymore Mr. Borgin." Draco replied with that patented sneer of his. 

"Yes yes, of course." Mr. Borgin stepped behind the dusty counter. "So, can I interest you in anything?" 

Draco ran a hand along the counter. "As you probably know, I'm taking a teaching job for that fool Dumbledore this year, defense against the dark arts. I thought I'd cover cursed items in my class, and everyone knows that Borgin and Burkes is the only place for cursed items." He held up the gnarled and twisted Hand of Glory. "I'll start with this. Anything else?"

Mr. Borgin rummaged around behind the counter and withdrew a number of seemingly innocent items. "This," He said lifting up a cotton Hawaiian Shirt, "Is an Acid Shirt. It causes severe burns to whoever wears it."

Draco examined the shirt for a moment. "Cute, but not what I'm looking for." Borgin looked disppointed for a moment, but dug something else out. This time he withdrew a pearl necklace. 

"This has killed over two dozen muggle owners to date. It was created two hundred years ago by a Pureblooded wizard, a member of the Dolohov family if I'm not mistaken." Draco fingered the pearls in the necklace. 

"Yes, this'll do nicely." Draco pocketed the necklace and the Hand of Glory. 

"Excellent, Excellent." Mr. Borgin nodded profusely. "That will be forty-five Galleons for both items." Draco threw down the money, grabbed his items and walked out of the store without another word. 

He was heading down the street towards the far more respectable Diagon Alley when he was suddenly body checked from the side and knocked into a dark side alleyway. 

"Draco M'lad, how are ye this fine day?" Draco blinked as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, then he saw a large man who sported a wild mane of red hair and was built like an oak tree. 

"Morag MacDougal. How are you?" Draco put on his most charming smile. 

"Back from a seven year stint in the Hells of Azkaban, thanks to you." The burly Scotsman grunted, "Ye betrayed the lot of us. And I gotta say, we dinnae appreciate it, Draco." 

"Hey, Voldemort was on the way out. I was smart enough to realize that. I was just looking out for number one!" 

"How very Slytherin of you Draco." Said a voice behind him. Malfoy turned around to face the speaker and was faced with a willowy woman with startling green eyes and long dark brown hair. 

"Blaise Zabini. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see you here." Draco snapped, as he reached into his back pocket. 

"Looking for this Draco?" Blaise asked, twirling his wand between her long slender fingers. Draco glared, furious because now he knew he was in trouble. The sinking feeling in his stomach just got worse when a number of other figures were stepping from the shadows. 

"Draco, I'd like ye to meet a few mates of mine. Crabbe and Goyle ye know. Then there's Marcus Flint, another ole mate o' yours."

A penetrating cold feeling set in over Draco, and he suddenly found it hard to breathe. "Oh yeah." Morag continued. "The Dementors have been dyin' t' meet ye as well." Malfoy's vision was blurring then he fell to the ground as darkness descended on him.

Harry stared intently at the chessboard in front of him. The pieces were all looking up at him intently, waiting for his next move. Harry had been playing wizard chess for over fifteen years now, but he hadn't gotten much better. "Knight to E-three." He watched as the knight slid to the ordered square. Then he glanced up at Ron expectantly. 

"Queen to E-three." Ron ordered and his Queen struck down Harry's Knight with one swipe. Harry stared at the board hopelessly, looking for a move but not seeing one. Ginny, who was watching the battle with mild interest, leaned forward and whispered in Harry's ear. Harry face lit up as he ordered his Bishop into position to make the checkmate on Ron's king. 

"That doesn't count!" on huffed. "Ginny helped you." 

"I did not!" Ginny looked indignant. "What I told him had absolutely nothing to do with chess."

"Oh really?" Ron's eyebrow cocked in an inquisitive manner. "Than what, exactly was it about then?" 

"Now, if I'd wanted you to know that, Ron, I would've said it out loud." In truth, it had been about the chess game, but he wanted Ron to think that Harry had beaten him fair, and it was too much fun to irk him off like this.

Ron grumbled some more as Harry put away the chess pieces. Suddenly a large barn owl swooped into the Burrow's open window and a letter landed right in front of Harry, and he immediately recognized the handwriting in the address. "It's from Dumbledore." 

Mr. Harry Potter.

The Living Room of the Burrow

Ottery St. Catchpole.

"How does he always know exactly where you are?" Ginny wondered. "I mean, it was kind of impressive when we were kids. Now, it's just creepy." 

Harry shrugged as he tore open the envelope and took out the letter inside. 

_Dear Mr. Potter_

I am writing to you to ask you of a favor. A few days ago, Mr. Draco Malfoy, who was slated to take over the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher here at the school has gone missing. We believe he's been kidnapped. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement is looking into that but that's not why I'm writing. I am writing to ask you for a favor. I need you to take over as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher until Mr. Malfoy can be found. You showed remarkable talent for the subject here in school and your Auror training more than qualifies you for the position. 

You need not worry about your duties as a member of the Guardian Project. If an occasion arises in which you have to leave for a mission, no matter how abruptly a substitute teacher will be found. Even if that teacher is myself. I look forward to your response in this matter. 

Sincerely;

Albus Dumbledore

Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

"How does Dumbledore know about Project Guardian?" Ron wondered as Harry read through the letter again. 

"Ron, don't be a prat. Dumbledore is part of the International Confederation of Wizards, who control Project Guardian. Of course he knew about it." Ginny rolled her eyes exasperatedly. Ron shrugged. 

"Malfoy's gone missing, Hard to believe the Curse of the Defense Teacher hit him this early, usually it doesn't strike until at least third term." He looked over at Harry. "You're not actually thinking of taking the job, are you?" 

"Maybe I am, the curse isn't always something terrible happening Ron, it just means that the teacher won't be back the next year. Look at Professor Lupin, nothing bad happened to him."

"Harry, he's a werewolf!" Ron muttered. 

"Yes, but that wasn't because he took the teaching position, he was already a werewolf long before that." 

__

Ron shrugged. "I guess you're right. Well, Hermione'll be happy." 

"Plus, if I take the job, maybe I can find out what happened to Malfoy." 

"Why do you care about that snake?" Ron looked incredulous.

"I don't, but it's my job."

Better you than me." Ginny muttered. 


	5. Shadows, Specters and Secrets

A/N sorry if this chapters a bit short, I had a hard time getting it done, nevertheless it is important. I want to thank everyone who's reviewed me so far, especially if you've reviewed multiple times. I hope everyone's enjoying this as I'm enjoying writing it, um. Yeah I guess that's it, oh and Obviously I don't own anything save for my original characters, and I'm not making money off this, so don't sue, as I'm phenomenally broke. 

Project Guardian

Chapter 5: Shadows, Specters and Secrets

He could hear the sound of exercise weights hitting each other down the hall. The weight room was busy today. That wasn't really a surprise, there wasn't much else to do while on residential duty in Atlantis. The Sabretooths were currently monitoring the control room and the Black Knights were breaking in their brand new Tempest brooms. Which left Procyon and his fellow Redhawks with an inordinate amount of leisure time, at least until their shift started. 

Which is exactly why the young Auror was down on the exercise mats, stretching his limbs in preparation, nor was he the only one. He paused for a moment to watch Ami and Fleur going through their respective aerobics routines. The two were as different as night and day. On the one hand you had Ami. She was living up to her reputation as an adrenaline junkie. She had snubbed the gym's parallel bars and balance beam. Instead, she was up in the rafters, swinging and flipping between _them._ Then, there was Fleur, who was doing a very slow and languid routine, stretching each and every muscle like a cat. She was like no woman he'd ever seen before. Procyon was amused to see that he wasn't the only one who had stopped to watch her either. 

He walked across the mat towards a line of clay statues in metal armor. He touched each of the six of them in turn with the tip of his wand. Awakening each of the golems so that he could perform his own practice. As he touched each of them their masonry eyes glowed red and a hollow growl escaped from their earthen lips. He stepped onto the mat as they circled him, slashing the arm threateningly with their swords. 

Procyon glanced around, making sure that no one in the vicinity would be hurt by his next action. He raised his wand into the air and cried _"Umbrageo!" _Immediately a number of lights extinguished and others brightened, blanketing the whole room in shades and shadows. 

Procyon smirked, the only show of emotion he let himself betray. He glanced at his reflection in the helmet of the golem in front of him. He watched as his tan colored eyes turned a deep black, black as his name, black as the _shadows. _"Let's play." 

The golems charged in, swords raised high, a muddy roar on their lips. Procyon ducked under the first blow, dodged the second and the third. He leaned back and kicked at the wrist of one of the golems, the sword flew out of the golem's hands and up into the air. It landed point down in the mat, Procyon grabbed the hilt and raised the sword just in time to parry a blow. He got to his feet and slashed around wildly, forcing the golems back and giving him some room to breathe. 

He cleared his mind and jump at one of the Golem's landing in it's shadow. Before the statue warrior had time to react the shadow rose up to envelop him, sliding over his body like oozing oil. In a blink he was gone and the shadow was back on the floor as if nothing had happened. 

The golems looked around stupidly. Procyon was nowhere to be found. He climbed out of the shadow and had just raised his sword to strike…

"CODE BLACK! CODE BLACK!" Procyon jumped about three feet in the air and dropped the sword with a loud clang. 

All around him the Redhawks were mobilizing, streaming out of the common and into the main hallway. 

"What's going on?" Ron shouted over the noise of the sirens. 

"Code Black." Harry yelled back, as the lot of them charged down the hallways. 

"What's Code Black mean?"

"Black is an intruder." John told the red head. 

"Hey! I take offense at that!" Procyon shot back. 

"Joke later, catch bad guy now!" Collins snapped. 

"HEY YOU! GET BACK HERE!" Suddenly a small man dressed all in black came sprinting around the corner. He took one look at the group of Aurors charging towards him and took a flying leap at the wall. There was a flash of liquid black and he disappeared.

"Oh shite!" Procyon spat as he charged forward and leaped into the shadow after him. _If this guy's a shadowmancer, then I'm the only one who can catch him. _

It was undeniably cold inside the shadow realm, and the longer one stayed inside of it, the harder it was to get someone out… unless you were a shadowmancer, like Procyon. As he traveled through the vortex, he struggled to keep the terrible memories from surfacing, it was lucky he had as much practice as he did at this, otherwise he might be overcome with the grief of his past. Up ahead, he could see a light, that was his exit point. Light struck his eyes again as he left the shadow-port, just behind the intruder. 

"Stop!" He shouted as the spy took off running again "Damn it!" There was a crash as the spy ran smack into Ginny. Before the nurse could react, the spy turned and flung her through her own shadow before leaping in the shadow of a nearby weapons locker. 

"This is Procyon!" Black spoke through the communications spell. "He's heading toward the out-port, down the third R&D corridor, I'm going to try and shadow chase him, but cut him off, if you can." He cut the comm link and stepped into the shadow. 

Ami heard the communication from Procyon through her own spell. She also knew she was the closest to the out-port. The spy was heading straight for her. It was time for another one of her patented crazy stunts. She threw her broom down and it floated at mount height. She leaped onto and balanced on it for a moment, lying as flat as possible along the broom's shaft. She raced along the corridors to the port room, at an insane speed, eyes narrowed to catch every detail. She banked around a ninety-degree corner, fortunately all personnel were busy chasing down the intruder, so the way was clear. 

She arrived at the port just as the intruder jumped out of her shadow. He looked around for a moment, looked at the activated port, then looked back at Ami, as if he was calculating his odds of getting to the portal before she could draw her wand. She immediately informed him of the odds by having her wand in hand faster than he could blink. "Try it, I dare you." She said, stepping closer to him. He stepped closer to the portal, she didn't move, but there was a smirk on her face and a glint in her eye he didn't entirely like, or trust. 

He made his move, taking a flying leap at the portal. 

_"Petrificus Totalus!"_

"Stupefy!" Ami looked up to see Black, with his wand pointed at the now stunned and petrified intruder. 

"Full Body Bind." She commented, looking impressed. "Nice one." 

"It may be, but you can't argue with a classic Stun spell." He returned with a half grin. He turned to regard the incapacitated prisoner. "Still, as he can shadow-port, a few extra precautions would not be remiss. _"Ferula" _Strong cables shot out of his wand and bound the unconscious man from the neck down. _"Mobilicorpus" _The prone body floated in the air and followed Procyon and Ami as the walked back to Redhawk Commons. Somebody must have realized the threat had passed, because the sirens stopped suddenly. 

"Ginny's gone missing." Harry reported to Collins, as the rest of Redhawk was stepping into the room.

"Ginny's missing?" Ron repeated. "Oh man, she's probably been kidnapped!" 

"She's not been kidnapped." Black grunted as he walked in with Ami, followed in by the floating form of their intruder. "She's just trapped in a shadow." 

"She's what?" 

By way of answer, Procyon stepped over to Ron's shadow, reached into it, and after fishing around a bit, withdrew a pale-skinned hand, then an arm, then with a tug, the rest of Ginny fell out of the shadow, landing on the floor with a thump. She had a dazed look on her face and was shaking uncontrollably. 

"C-c-c-cold." Ginny shivered. "It w-w-w-was so c-c-c-cold." Harry and Ron pulled her to her feet and pushed her towards the fireplace, conjuring about a dozen blankets at the same time. 

"Alright." Jack sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "What in the bloody hell just happened?" 

"We were invaded." Black said simply. "The intruder is a Shadow Elementalist, also known as a shadowmancer. That's how he was able to bypass the myriad of security systems this island no doubt has, as it's near impossible to keep a Shadowmancer out of someplace he wants to go, as long as he's in range, and there's something that casts a shadow where he's heading." He smirked wryly. "I used to use it to break into my Professors' offices and filch test answers." 

Collins lit another cigar. "What kind of range are we talking here?" 

Black shrugged. "Assuming that Shadow is the only element Chuckles has access to, and that is far more likely than not, a mile." 

"That means he must have jumped here from a ship." Ramirez noted. "It's several miles from here to the nearest shore." 

"That ships bound to be long gone, unfortunately." Collins noted, blowing smoke out of his nose. "That must've been why he was heading to an out-port." 

"I think," Said Harry, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "The question is; how did he know how to find the island and, once he got here, how did he know his way around?" 

"Good question Harry," Asher said with a sigh, "I just wish we knew an answer." 

"Is it possible that we could have a traitor amongst us?" Tonks asked, a pink eyebrow raised in a quizzical manner. 

"It's a possibility." Collins admitted. "But, I'd rather not go around accusing people until we have more proof." 

"Well, it's no one in this room, I can assure you." Ami said with conviction. The others, save for Collins, shot her a quizzical look, silently asking her how she could be so sure. She smiled, and didn't answer their unspoken questions. 

"We'll worry about the mole possibility later, for now we have a prisoner to deal with." Collins inhaled on the cigar and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Black, is there anything you can do to ensure that this guy can't jump out of here." 

Black thought for a minute. "There is, it's not completely fool proof, but it's better than nothing." He stood up and arched his back. "However, I will need Ron, Harry, Asher, John and Ramirez to help me." 

They looked wary but agreed to help. Black nodded and cast the Body Levitation charm on the still unresponsive prisoner. He signaled the five of them to follow behind him. They headed through the Atlantean maze, down into the dungeon which, up till now had been completely empty. They stopped at a weapons locker and they each, except Black, chose a bladed weapon, and none of them, except Black, knew why.

"Are you sure we should trust him Harry?" Ron muttered as they marched down the corridor. "He's an Elementalist, and a Shadow elementalist at that, everyone knows Elemency is a Dark Art." 

"So is Parseltongue, Ron." Harry responded, looking pointedly back at his friend. "He hasn't given us any reason not to trust him-"

"-Or any reason to trust him, at that." Ron interrupted

"He saved Ginny, and he _is_ an Auror." Harry reminded him. "Besides Ron, how many of your wizard prejudices have been proven completely false at least once?" 

Ron sighed and rolled his eyes. "Alright, fine. But, remember Harry, Shadowmancers created the Dementors."

They were led into a cell of the dungeon. It was completely windowless, there weren't even bars on the door. Black lowered the prisoner to the floor and pointed his wand into the air. _"Lumos Solem!" _Instantly a bright globe of light appeared, in one corner of the room. Each of the five men around him cringed away. 

"Did you have to make it so bloody bright?" Ron cried. 

"Brighter the light, the deeper the shadow." Procyon responded cryptically. "I'm going to need each of you to stand in front of the wall, about a foot or so away, yes that's it." They each stood near the walls positioned so that they cast a large shadow behind them. "Good now, hold out the weapons you're holding." Each of them hefted the various weapons so that they too were casting shadows against the wall.

At this point Black went and touched each of the five shadows, muttering to himself. When he stepped away they were all shocked, (and Ron Especially) to see white, glowing eyes of light form on each of the shadows. When they each stepped away, their shadows remained where they were, swinging the weapons they held, expertly. 

"Shadow Golems." Procyon explained, as the five shadows leaped upon the shadow of the prisoner, hacking it into little black pieces until nothing remained. "They'll prevent him from porting out since now there are no normal shadows for him to leave through and nothing he can use to create his own golems."

Ron shuddered visibly as he watched his own shadow prowl around the walls of the cell, and when he turned to look behind him, only to realize that he no longer _had _a shadow.

"Don't worry Ron," Procyon said with a wry grin. "Your shadow will return once a new light source hits your body." Ron didn't look all that reassured. 

They left the cell, and their shadows did return. Harry, for his part, was rather reassured that there would be far less of a chance that the prisoner could escape now. 

*****************

Blaise Zabini sat atop a desk in a room of the Scottish castle that she and the remaining Death Eaters were using as a home base, she was idly polishing her nails a lurid green color as the person kneeling before her gave his report. Behind her, MacDougal stood, slightly in the shadows. The large redheaded Scotsman had a deep frown on his face. 

"It went as you said." The kneeling figure continued. "The Aurors were so distracted by your intruder that they never saw me slip out of the Control Chamber and down into the vaults. I was able to take the item your requested, Blaise. …However, your man was captured." 

Blaise allowed a small sigh to escape her lips. "It is unfortunate to lose someone with talents such as his, I'll admit, but other than that particular gift he was no great loss. He can't give them any useful information, and he was meant to be a distraction after all. If he had made it away from the compound all the better, but he did not." She breathed lightly on her nails and lazily examined her handiwork. "But I digress. We got what we needed, let the Guardians have the shadow walker. We don't need him to get inside the compound, as we have you on the inside." 

The informant smiled slightly as he handed over a small unassuming package. Blaise accepted the package with a nod, then gestured for the young man to leave. After the Mole had left the chamber she stood up and left through a side antechamber. 

"Did you get the package?" A high and chillingly cold voice asked from the shadows. 

Blaise kneeled and lowered her face so the speaker could not see the look of utter revulsion on her face. "Yes Lord, it was just delivered into my hands moments ago." She carefully schooled her face into a completely blank expression so she could look up. "Everything is going according to plan. …Lord Voldemort."

Out of the shadows Voldemort came, a far cry from the evil snake-like being he had been before his second defeat at the hands of Harry Potter, Voldemort now looked far more human than he had been, rather like the man Tom Riddle would have become had his hideous physical transformation had never taken place. Nevertheless, despite his too-handsome features there was no mistaking the evil that resonated from his dark heart like a black aura, despite the silvery-blue light his body now gave off. 

Voldemort surveyed his ghost form and the ectoplasm dripping off the walls where he'd made his entrance, with disgust. It wasn't a real body, but at least he was able to communicate this time. He turned to his kneeling servant. "Let me see the item, Zabini."

Blaise opened the brown parcel and withdrew a shining gem. A crystal made completely of silver metal. Voldemort's face split into an evil grin when he saw the artifact. "The Soulstone." He cackled. "At last." He floated closer, examining each and every facet with unrestrained glee. "I wish I could touch it myself, imagine the power! But soon, oh yes soon." He cackled again and Blaise felt a shiver run down her spine and back up again. 

Finally Voldemort finished his little power-rant. "Very well, Blaise. You may go now, put the Stone in a safe place, if anything happens to it, I will be most displeased."

Blaise bowed her head. "Of course, My Lord." _As if you can threaten me. What are you going to do? Use the Cruciatus Curse on me? You can't even hold a wand anymore. Worthless specter. _As she left the chamber she reached in to the brown package and withdrew the second item she'd asked for, but her 'master' didn't know she had. It was a small bottle, about the size of her palm, carved from emerald and covered in silver filigree that formed twisted-looking runes. The stopper was shaped like a gruesome skull and made of heavy pewter. She smiled as she gazed down at it. _A little extra insurance. _She thought to herself. _Just in case. _


	6. Devil in a Black Jacket

A/N so um, a little warning to you all: This is what happens when you attempt to write at three in the morning on a caffeine buzz while watching Stigmata and sporadically listening to the _Grease _soundtrack. Doesn't make sense? It gets worse from here. So, abandon all hope ye who read past here; you have been warned. 

Standard disclaimer applies, this story not valid in Connecticut, Canada and the Caribbean. Story availability subject to local laws. Some restrictions apply. 

Chapter 7: Devil in a Black Jacket

Boredom was once again in the air as the Redhawks took their turn in the control room. It seemed the Dark Wizards of the world were keeping quiet for the moment, a prospect that suited Ryu Quing-Long quite fine. He was, after all, quite used to the quiet. He gazed at the large world map hanging on the wall in front of him, without really seeing it. A large green line of light rotated around the map in a steady circle, searching out the energy that accompanied dark magic. 

In the chair next to him Ami stretched leisurely and let out a long yawn that drew his attention. When she noticed that Ryu was looking at her she smiled impishly back at him.

"So how come you never talk Ryu?" She asked as she leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk in front of her. "I know you can."

Ryu regarded her with a confused expression.

"You talk in your sleep." She explained. "I've heard you when you nap in the commons." 

He smirked at her and shrugged his shoulders.

"Alright." She huffed "If you're going to be difficult, can I guess?" 

Ryu gestured with one hand, like they had anything better to do? 

"Hmm." Ami thought for a moment. "Did you take a vow of silence? There were some monks like that at the Temple where I was taught."

The silent wizard shook his head, though his eyes shone with amusement. 

"No? How about this; Translations spells don't work on you and you know none of us speak Japanese?" 

"I do!" Jack called over from the other side of the circular room. "I can speak four hundred and fifty languages. English and French, Latin, Old Dwarf, Lithuanian and Mermish and Centaur Common, Aborigine and Kuwanger and-"

"Hey was your tongue cut out?" Tonks asked. Apparently, the entire squad had been listening in to the conversation, and even the temporary relief of boredom was enough to draw them all in. Even as Ryu opened his mouth to show that he did indeed still have his tongue, they all started coming up with their own reasons for his self imposed muteness.

"Your mom was a banshee, so if you tried to talk you'd make our heads explode?"

"Don't be stupid Ramirez, banshee are undead, they can't mate vith humans." Krum muttered, rolling his eyes. "Besides, it's obvious he drank some Gibberish Gel vhen he vos younger, so now all he can do is mutter nonzense."

Ryu rolled his eyes, which was clearly a negative. 

"Zhat is ze stupeedist thing I have evair heard Viktor." Fleur sniffed haughtily, but didn't supply her own solution to the puzzle. 

"Maybe he really likes Kevin Smith movies?" Kara guessed, they all turned to stare at her. She looked at their staring faces. "What?"

"It's a muggle thing." John explained with a small grin. This seemed to satisfy everyone but Harry, who continued to look confused. "An _American_ muggle thing." he amended, with an amused expression.

Ami regarded Ryu again, but as he didn't offer up an explanation, she sigh exasperatedly. "Fine. Keep your secrets." There was silence in the room for a few minutes, until… 

"Say, did anyone catch the latest Chudley Cannons game?" Ron asked cheerfully before being pummeled with balls of parchment. "Ow hey! Alright, alright already! Stop it!" Harry shook his head as the pile of paper balls that littered the floor around Ron grew higher. Ever since the Cannons got on a seven game winning streak, Ron wouldn't shut up about them, even to the non-British members of the team who could care less what happened to the Cannons, so it was no wonder they'd started getting a little annoyed. 

"What in the devil is going on in here?" There was a bang as the door slammed open and the distinctive smell of tobacco surrounded them as Collins thundered into the room. All activity ceased and the Aurors looked at each other like a group of guilty school children. Collins, head wreathed in smoke as it usually was, surveyed the scene before him.

"You all better knock that off right now. This is a serious duty. If you're not paying attention to those instruments in front of you, you could miss something important. So cut the crap right now, or I'll give you all a detention!" 

A chorus of subdued yet slightly sarcastic 'Yes Sir.'s met this statement. 

"Now, as I had been about to inform you, the interrogation of the prisoner has just been completed." Collins was inwardly pleased to note that he now had the group's undivided attention. "Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to report otherwise, we learned absolutely nothing of value."

"Who was he sir?" Asher asked, a piqued, interested look on the burly Canadian's face. 

"A mercenary. Burglar for hire, he was sent into the compound to retrieve an item from a very specific room, however when he'd gotten to the room his employers directed him to, he was quite surprised to find himself in this room, facing a team of Aurors. He believes he was set up to take a fall by someone." 

"Who was his employer?" Harry wondered.

"Doesn't know, never met the man in person. Did business through an associate, who he never saw the face of." 

"Definitely sounds like a set up to me." John muttered, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "The question is why." 

"A distraction perhaps?" Viktor wondered. "If there is a truly a mole in the organization, this man vould provide enough chaos for him to do vhatever he vos sent to do." 

"That seems to be where the evidence is pointing." Collins affirmed with a nod. "However, I still don't like the idea of jumping to any conclusions as far as this 'mole' thing is concerned. The higher-ups are looking into the possibility, but we don't have any concrete proof yet. All I'm asking now is for you all to keep your eyes open." He took another puff on his cigar and left them to finish the rest of their shift in the control room. 

"Are we prepared?" Voldemort asked, a look of restrained glee on his face as he turned an appraising gaze upon the large Yew tree planted in the center of the chamber, surrounded by a pool of blood. Flint, Crabbe and Goyle were busy tracing complicated runes on the Tree of Death's trunk in silvery unicorn blood. 

Blaise glanced down at the silver Soulstone glinting in her hand, it's star-like beauty obscuring it's insidious nature. "Yes." Was all she said before MacDougal came stomping in dragging a barely conscious and badly bruised Draco Malfoy behind him. 

"Here ye go lassie, the star o' the show 'imself." He laughed, throwing Malfoy onto the hard stone floor, where they heard his shoulder snap audibly. 

Blaise regarded the brutish Scotsman with a quirked eyebrow. "Don't just stand there!" She snapped at Crabbe and Goyle. "Truss him up already." The two burly lummoxes lumbered forward and took hold of one of Malfoy's arms, with a heave they hoisted him against the trunk and bound his arms to the Yew's branches. Taking silver-bladed daggers in hand, they each made a long shallow cut in each of Malfoy's palms, drops of his blood dripped into the basin below him. 

Crabbe and Goyle stepped back and they and the other remaining Death Eaters formed a circle around the basin of blood. Silvery-blue moonlight shined onto the tree from a hole in the ceiling directly above it where the full moon was clearly visible. The light reflected off the silver blood runes outlined on the trunk, throwing them into sharp relief against the darkened wood. 

Blaise stepped forward and hung the chain that attached to the Soulstone around Draco's neck. Then she stepped back and joined the ring that the other Death Eaters had formed around the basin and tree. They began a slow haunting chant that echoed off the stone wall of the chamber, making it seem like there was a great crowd shouting, instead of just a handful of people in dark robes and hoods. 

The young brunette watched as the moonlit basin of blood started to bubble slightly, the runes on the tree began to not only reflect light, but to glow on their own. She couldn't help but watch in morbid fascination as the Soulstone pulsed against Malfoy's chest. With a cracking sound it shattered, the pieces clinging to his skin for a moment before melting into a collection of mercury-like drops. With an odd sucking sound the molten metal was absorbed into his body, causing Draco to scream in pain, before blacking out again, his body convulsing like he was under the Cruciatus Curse, after a moment it was over and the blood dripping from his palms turned from red to jet black. 

As soon as the now black blood hit the basin, the blood it contained started boiling over intensely, a gust of air blew violently through the chamber and the blood evaporated with a sudden explosion of red mist that obscured the view of Draco and the tree. There was silence for a moment, which was broken by a loud _crack! _of splitting wood, and a loud explosion of insane laughter.

Those assembled watched as a shadow formed just behind the curtain of mist, another gust of wind blew the red smoke away and the form was revealed. 

The figure was dressed in black leather boots, dark blue jeans and a black tee-shirt covered by a black dragon-leather jacket. Fingerless gloves covered his hands and dark glasses obscured his eyes. 

Blaise shivered, both because of the aura of unrepentant _evil _that surrounded the man, but because he looked oddly familiar. Then with a start she realized that it was _Draco, _well, it was …yet it wasn't. Where Draco's hair had been platinum blonde and short, this new Draco had just-below-shoulder length jet black hair that was bound into a ponytail at the base of his skull and his bangs were greased back. 

The new apparition turned his head slightly and Blaise could see behind the dark glasses, where Draco's eyes had been a stormy Gray, this… person's…. eyes were completely jet black… pupils, iris, everything. Black. 

Voldemort floated over and, much to the surprise of the gathered Death Eaters, he performed an elaborate bow before the unknown figure. 

"Lord Sarezhade." He murmured, "Allow me to be the first to welcome you back from your four-hundred year exile." 

'Sarezhade' turned to regard Voldemort with a cocked eyebrow expression. "Who are you, fallen one, and why have you released me?" 

Voldemort made another short bow. "I require a favor, O' Demon-Knight." 

Sarezhade let out a laugh, cruel and mocking. "A favor? Do you take me for some sort of Genie, Specter? Rub the stone and get a wish? I serve no mortal… even a dead one." He walked back over to the Yew tree, and Blaise was shocked to see that it had been split in half, right down the middle, the demon stood with one foot on either half and regarded Voldemort. 

"You still have not told me your name." He said with a sadistic grin. 

Voldemort bowed once again. "I am the Dark Mage Voldemort." Blaise noted the curious absence of the word 'Lord' in that title. Sarezhade, on the other hand, seemed amused. 

"Voldemort? The Thief of Death? That's funny, coming from a ghost. It's a title that is ill-suited to you." He polished his glasses lazily. "I Believe I shall instead call you Morty." 

Voldemort grimaced, and the demon noticed. "Oh. Don't like that? Shall I call you Voldy? Moldy-Voldy?" Sarezhade let out another laugh, obviously amused by himself. Blaise was forced to admit it was interesting to see her master cowed thusly. Sarezhade leaned against one half of the yew tree and put his legs up on the second half. 

"You amuse me, Ghosty, so I'll listen to this no-doubt pitiful request of yours." 

"I require, as you can see, a new body." 

"Hmm." Sarezhade licked the tip of his thumb and snapped his fingers, a scroll appeared in his hands and he unrolled it, reading over it carefully. "According to your dossier here, you've already had two chances at life. Oh and looky-here, it says both lives were ended by the same person. One Harold James Potter. Well, isn't that something?" The scroll disappeared in a puff of smoke. 

"You sound severely incompetent Morty. Why in the nine hells should I give you a third lease on life?" 

Voldemort drew himself up proudly. "I," He said haughtily. "Am the last living descendant of the great Salazar Slytherin. It is my destiny, my right, to purge the world of filth, and rule all the earth." 

There was a pause, then Sarezhade fell over laughing. Voldemort, by his expression, was not amused by this. 

"Oh that's funny!" The demon guffawed. "The 'great' Slytherin?" He laughed for a few more moments before getting hold of himself. "Nevertheless." He continued. "It just so happens that I need something, so we may be able to help each other." He got to his feet and walked up to Voldemort. "I want revenge on the one who put me in that bauble… or at least, his descendant. So." He turned to the ghostly wizard and stuck out his hand. "Do we have an accord? I get you a body, you bring me the one who wields the _Diamond Blade._"


	7. Boy's Night Out, Sort Of

A/N Okay um, just a little warning: This chapter contains heavy drinking, minimal amounts of drug usage and an _implied_ "adult situation." If you don't like it, you have been warned. If you must give me flak, do it in review form. Um, yeah, I think that's it anyway. 

Disclaimer: I own nothing that's from the Books, otherwise I would be rich, British and having some serious gender issues, as I am male, and JK Rowling is not. Er, yeah, *now* I think I'm done. 

Chapter 7: Boy's Night Out. … Sort Of

It was Friday and the Redhawks were all happy over the fact that their first week in residence was now over and done with and they could resume their normal lives. Jack was currently trying to convince anyone who would listen to him to go out and celebrate.

"Come on mates, it'll be fun." He was saying to John, Harry and Ron, as the three of them lounged around. 

"Well, I could use a drink." John mused, scratching his chin reflectively. "Alright count me in." 

"Harry? Ron? You guys going to come along?"

Ron nodded. "Sure, why not?" 

Harry thought about it for a moment. "Yeah okay." 

"What's up?" Ramirez asked as he walked into the room, his arm casually thrown around Tonks's shoulder. 

"We were thinking of hitting a pub, to celebrate the end of our first residential." Jack explained, a smirk on his face. "How about it, my little metamorphs, are you in?" 

They glanced at each other and nodded. 

It took little convincing (some more than others) but soon they had the entire squadron heading to the pub. Well, almost everyone. 

"Aw come on Black, come hang out with us for awhile." Tonks whined playfully. "Quit being such a lone wolf." 

"Leave me alone." Black snarled. "I just want to go home." 

"'Fraid not, Black." Collins barked. "You're goin' with us."

"You can't tell me t-" 

"Yes I can, Procyon." Collins eyes had a hard edge to them, though his face wore an amused smirk. "Yer goin' an that's the last of it." 

"But I, you can't, I just…" Black stammered, then went silent with a growl. 

"So," Kara clapped her hands. "Where are we going?" 

John smirked at her. "I know just the place." They each shot him a questioning look, but he refused to give any details, merely leading them towards the nearest out-portal. He keyed in the sequence and the door-that-led-nowhere filled with a hazy green light. He waved the rest through, then taking Kara's arm led her through with a jaunty wink.

There was a brief flash of light and they appeared in a darkened alley of a city street, dressed in muggle clothes. They took a moment to look around. The alley led out into a street crowded with muggles. 

With another grin John led the group down the street and across another into a dingy little club called the _Viper's Den._ John turned to the Redhawks as they stood outside the building. "Alright guys, this is a muggle pub, so no magic, or… at least no magic a drunk or stoned person would realize." With a amused grin he led them into the club. 

They entered a smoky room filled with loud and largely inappropriate music, bright neon lights decorated the walls and ceiling. The room was filled with close to a hundred college-age muggles in various states of intoxication and/or hallucination. The group filed in a took over a large table in the corner, while John made his way over to the bar. 

"What'll it be?" The woman behind the bar asked without looking at him.

"How about a blind prophet, Robyn?" John asked with a grin. The girl immediately turned around with a surprised look on her face. 

"John? What the hell are you doing here?" She asked, as she set about mixing the obscure drink that John had asked for. "I haven't seen you here since you graduated from…" She dropped off and looked at him expectantly.

" From whatever school it was that I went to." He finished with a wink. "I'm just showing a couple co-workers my old watering hole." 

She snorted derisively, handing John his drink. "Well, you got the 'hole' part of that right, anyway. You gonna want a pitcher of beer for your friends too?"

John glanced back at the rest of the Aurors, "Oh… better make it about five, to start. We've had an interesting week, and if I know Asher, that Canuck will probably put down two by himself," 

"Right. I'll bring 'em over in a sec." John knocked on the bar and retreated with a wink. 

"So what was that all about?" Kara asked with a sly look as John returned to the table. "Should I be feeling jealous?" 

"Of who, Robyn?" John snorted. "Cute girl, but she's far to sarcastic for my tastes."

"And I'm not?" 

John grinned. "No, you're just sarcastic enough." 

"Harry, you were raised by muggles, right?" Ron asked, while poking Harry in the arm.

"Well, technically yes." Harry began, a slightly suspicious look on his face, "…Why?"

"Well, maybe you can tell me how that blinking light on the dance floor slows down time?"

Harry sighed exasperatedly. "That's a strobe light Ron, it doesn't slow down time, it just blinks so fast that your brain thinks things are moving slower than they are. It's an optical illusion."

"Oh." The red headed young man looked thoughtful as he processed that. "Either way I think it's giving me a headache." Harry rolled his eyes. Ron _really _should have taken Muggle Studies. 

"What's up with those guys?" Ginny asked, leaning over to whisper in Kara's ear. The other witch turned to look at what Ginny was pointing at, and laughed.

"Them? Those are just a couple of stoners."

"Stoners?" Procyon looked up, a disturbingly gleeful look on his face. "…Fun!" 

The others shot him questioning looks. The young Auror turned to Collins who was smoking his usual cigar, and took the plume of smoke that was rising from it in hand. "Just going to borrow this for a second." ignoring the surprised and suspicious looks from his team mates he proceeded to weave the smoke into a complex sigil, which, when finished, he blew towards the group of giggling youngsters. 

"What did you…?" Tonks began but Black gestured for her to keep quiet. 

"Dude." One of the glassy-eyed teenagers nudged another. "Is it just me, or is that a group of pink monkeys performing impure acts on a jungle gym?"

"Nah, that's just a bunch of three-eyed elephants in top hats. Nothin' to worry about." The other replied with a dismissive wave.

"Dude…" The third muttered. "That's not right! Josh seriously, what did you put in this shit?"

"I didn't do nothin' to it, it's pure man. I got it from a guy down on forty-second." 

"The lights are moving!" The first one muttered, staring serenely at the ceiling above him. 

"Okay Procyon," Collins grunted. "That's enough."

"Alright, alright, I'm done." Black waved his hand and the cloud of smoke around the three lessened a bit. 

John shook his head, amused despite himself. At this point Robyn appeared lugging a large tray weighed down with several pitchers of beer and a number of glass mugs. 

"There you go, Johnny, don't get too rowdy now." With a wave and a grin, Robyn walked back to her spot behind the bar. 

They each poured a glass of the brew, with the notable exception of Fleur, ("I weel not drink zis swill!") and proposed a toast to the completion of their first week in-residence. As soon as she drained the beer and set her glass on the table, Ginny turned to level an appraising stare on Harry. 

It didn't take long for Harry to become unnerved by the scrutiny. "What? What is it Ginny?" 

"I bet I could drink you under the table Potter." She said with a half smile.

Harry snorted derisively, "Is that so, Weasley? Your brothers offered me a similar proposal at mine and Ron's graduation party, and if I recall, Fred and George were passed out after about eight drinks apiece."

Ginny continued to smile and attempt to stare the Boy-Who-Lived down. "Fred and George can't hold their liquor." 

"And you can?" Harry asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"That's right." 

"Five Galleons says that Harry here out drinks the lady," Jack put in, laying his money on the table. "Any takers?" 

"I'm in for Ginny." Kara said with a smile. 

"Gotta disagree love." John smirked as he fished out his gold. "Put me down for five on Harry." Jack nodded as he marked down the bets on a spare piece of parchment.

"Go get 'im Gin." Tonks said with a wide grin as she laid down her gold. 

"Ah, what the hell? I'll bet on the Firebrand there." Ramirez said with a nod to Ginny, before someone made a whip-crack sound behind him.

"I always like a risk." Ami put in with a smile. "I'll go in for Ginny." 

"Anybody else?" Jack asked, looking around the table. "Fleur?"

"Zis is so boorish, gambling on alcoholism." She sniffed, "…'Owever, I weel put five galleons on 'Arry." 

"I vill also bet on Mister Potter." Viktor grunted, throwing his galleons on the table.

"Is that all?" Jack looked around the table, but nobody else seemed to want to place a bet. 

"Aren't you going to throw in Ron?" Ginny asked with a mischievous smile. 

"Yeah, right, a bet between my best mate and my little sister. No, I'm pretty sure I'd end up losing no matter what."

"Alright then." Jack said in a very officious tone. "The rules of engagement are thus: Rule number one, both mugs will be filled to the top line, to ensure that both participants are consuming the same amount." 

"Agreed." Harry said, and Ginny nodded.

"Rule number two: The contest is over only when one participant passes out, throws up, or calls it quits. Rule number three: there is no rule number three. Rule number four: If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight. Rule number five: Never wear white after labor day. Rule Number six: in the event of a water landing-"

"ALRIGHT ALREADY!" 

"Ahem. Sorry about that." Jack coughed. "Boozers are you ready? Set?" He paused for effect. "POUR!" 

Two mugs were filled and the game was on.

"So, who do you think is gonna win?" Asher muttered to Ryu out of the corner of his mouth, before taking a swallow of his own beer. The Japanese wizard shrugged and continued to watch the epic battle of fermented proportions. 

"How long have they been at it?" John asked, gaping at the two contenders

"They've been drinking for about two hours now, and they don't look like they're ready to stop." Ron responded, gaping at his sister and best friend. "I mean, look at them! It's like they're drinking water. I'm wondering where Ginny learned to drink like that!" He took a gulp of his own beer and barely avoided knocking over the Tower o' Pitchers that Tonks and Ramirez were making out of their dead soldiers, the number of which had far exceeded fifteen. By this point everybody was feeling a little tipsy except Fleur, who wasn't drinking, and, oddly enough, Harry and Ginny.

"I mean Shirioushly man." Jack slurred. "I'm jush sayin' that if a man walked into… into a bar, it would really, really, really… really hurt."

"No man!" Ramirez gestured wildly, almost knocking over the tower. "It's not a bar, like a metal bar or a crow bar or somethin'. It's a bar like, like a tavern or you know, a bar like we're sittin' in." 

Jack looked confused for a second. Then comprehension dawned on his booze addled face. "Ohhhh…"

"Man are you drunk." Tonks muttered looking at her fellow Metamorph with an amused expression.

"No I'm not!" Ramirez looked completely scandalized. Tonks only shook her head.

"Can I ask you a question?" Procyon asked leaning over towards Fleur with a smirk on his face.

"I suppoze." She responded with a guarded look

"This whole Veela thing. Is it just a cover up for your insecurities?" 

Fleur looked startled. "What do you mean?" 

"Well, have you ever tried getting a man without throwing around the pheromones?"

"'Ow dare you!" Fleur snapped. "Zhat is none of your business!"

He shrugged. "Act the part of the bruised honor all you want, but I can tell you're trying to charm someone here, and it's not working, whether because they don't notice, aren't affected or they're too drunk to care isn't the point. They're not paying attention to you and it's driving you crazy." 

Fleur gaped and sputtered for a moment. "You are a peeg!" Procyon smirked, just a little cruelly, "Besides." Fleur continued with a haughty flip of the hair and an upturned nose. "'Ow do you know zhey are not paying attention to me?"

Procyon blinked, then his eye widened and Fleur smirked at him. "Maybe you are not as unaffected as you would like to think, non?"

He turned away with a scowl.

Harry stared over at Ginny, his vision was kind of blurry, but he couldn't tell if it was because of the alcohol or because his glasses were slipping down his nose. He supposed it didn't matter much. He could see her just fine. 

Ginny Weasley. The Enemy. …No, that wasn't right. She wasn't the enemy, not really, this was just a friendly little game. Ginny was his friend, a good friend too, she had been there at the end, when he fought old Voldy. Her… and Hermione, and Ron, and Neville. Where was Neville these days? Harry wondered. He didn't see him around much anymore. Oh yeah, he was in the Black Knight squadron… or something like that. Anyway, he had been there too, Neville, him and Ginny, and that other girl, the smart one, and Ron, …and Ginny. She was a pretty good drinker, which reminded him…

"Hey Ron!" Harry turned a bleary eye towards his best mate. "How… how many have we had so far?" 

Ron shrugged. "Like, ten, I think? I dunno."

"Ron!" Ginny cried, a little too loudly, "You were supposed to be keeping track for us."

"I was?" Ron blinked at his sister. 

"Yes!" Ginny snapped. "You great prat." 

"Oh." Harry smiled. Ginny had a temper, but fortunately she wasn't an angry drunk. She was looking a little blurry though, he wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe it was his glasses? 

She was looking at him, well, almost. Her gaze kept focusing and unfocusing. So he looked right back at her. 

"You wanna call it a draw?" They both said in unison.

"Yes." They both responded. 

"That's good." John muttered. "I think it's time we were headin' out anyways." And he got up and stumbled off towards the bar to pay the enormous tab.

"I think it'd probably be best if you all slept this off at the compound and go home in the morning." Collins said, taking a puff of his cigar.

Harry and Ginny dragged themselves out of their seats. Ginny stumbled a bit but Harry held her up.

"Okay, this is what we're going to do Harry." Ginny muttered, throwing her arm around his shoulder. "We'll hold each other up. That way, if you fall to the left, I'll stop you, and if I fall to the right, you'll stop me." 

"But what if I fall to the right?" Harry asked.

"I just told you, I'd hold you up. This way it'll be impossible for either of us to fall over because we've got every angle covered."

"Right." Harry nodded. Then they fell forwards.

"Did we just fall down?" Harry asked from the floor."

Ginny shook her head, as she lay sprawled right next to him. "No." 

"I didn't think so." 

The other Redhawks helped their teammates to their feet and the group stumbled and pushed their way out of the door. When they'd gotten out of sight of the muggles, they activated their portkeys and in a flash they were back in the Redhawk common room. 

Ginny took Harry's arm. "Come on Harry, I'll help you get to your room, then you can help me get to mine."

"That doesn't make any sense." Harry told her with a perplexed look on his face.

"Oh how would you know? You're drunk."

Harry waved his hand dismissively. "I'm not so think as you drunk I am." Arm in arm the two of them stumbled towards their quarters, much to the amusement of their _slightly _less intoxicated companions.

The next morning, light hit Harry over the head like a sledgehammer. He was pretty sure he could actually hear it coming in through the window. He took the pillow and hide underneath it, hoping that death was coming soon. This was probably the worst hangover he'd ever had. Not that he'd had a lot of hangovers in his lifetime, but of those that he'd experienced, this was the worst. He groaned in frustration and pain. Then, out of the silence, an answering groan came from somewhere in his room.

That wasn't right at all.

Suddenly, when he stopped to think about it, he became aware of something else in the room. Or rather some_one_ else in his _bed. _He rolled over and cracked open his eye just enough to see hair the color of a dried maple leaf. He could tell it was at least shoulder length, so it couldn't be Ron. That left him very few options as to who it could be though. 

She yawned and rolled over and Harry was left with no doubts, a quick peek under the covers told him something else too. 

Ginny Weasley was asleep, and naked, in his bed. And he had no idea how it happened. 

"Oh Ron's gonna love this." Harry muttered, hiding under his pillow again.


	8. Bring Me The Diamond Blade

Chapter 8: Bring Me the Diamond Blade!

Ginny woke up with a splitting, pounding hangover. _Oh, man_ she groaned mentally _Why can't I ever remember what these things feel like on the night before? _She rolled over in bed and realized that she was not exactly where she expected to be. 

Then she noticed she was not alone either. 

She let out a cry of surprise when she saw Harry in the bed next to her, causing him to jerk awake, and promptly fall out of the bed. Then, they both winced in pain as her shout registered with their respective hangovers. 

"Damn it Gin, what are trying to do, Crack my head open?" Harry grunted as he pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his head crossly.

"Well, I'm sorry, but in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly where I expected to wake up!" She sniped. It was then that they each noticed the other's extreme lack of clothing, blushed identical shades of red, and turned to face opposite walls.

"Here!" Harry grabbed one of his bathrobes off the chair where he'd thrown it and tossed it over his shoulder to her, slipping another one over himself. Sufficiently covered up, they turned to face each other again. 

"Okay, okay," Ginny muttered, pacing frantically. "What just happened?"

"Well, I think it's pretty obvious!" Harry responded sarcastically

"I know that!" Ginny shot back, a note of irritation in her voice. "What I meant was…" She waved her arms, obviously frustrated

"What?" Harry asked, an eyebrow arched. 

"I don't know!" She burst out exasperatedly. "I don't know!" Suddenly she fell to her knees and laid her head back on the bed, her whole body was shaking and Harry was sure she was crying.

"Whoa! Ginny, it's okay, we're not kids anymore, we're two consenting adults who had a little too much to drink. It happens, it'll be okay." He knelt down beside her and place a hand on her shoulder. She raised her head and he realized that she'd actually been laughing.

"What's so funny?" Harry asked, a little indignantly.

"This whole situation." She grinned at him and Harry wondered vaguely if she'd snapped. "We got drunk last night, then we slept together." 

"And that's… funny?" Harry asked uncertainly 

"Bloody hilarious." Ginny confirmed. "Mum would kill us." She got up and took her wand out of the pocket of the jeans she'd been wearing the night before. She muttered some incantation and pointed it at her own stomach. It glowed red and she nodded.

"Well, you'll be happy to know I'm not pregnant."

Harry let out a relieved sigh. "Oh well, that's good." 

Ginny glared at him. "Oh, I see, don't want to get stuck with me do you?" 

Harry gaped at her, looking very much like a fish. "I… I, um… I"

"Relax, Harry. I'm kidding." Ginny sighed, rolling her eyes, amused.

Harry rolled his eyes back, but otherwise didn't reply. "So, near as I can figure out," He said scratching his chin contemplatively. "Last night we were so drunk we decided to help each other to our rooms, I guess we just got to mine and I must've forgot about it."

"Well, that wasn't very gentlemanly of you, now was it?" Ginny replied with a barely perceptible smirk.

Harry made a mock bow. "A thousand apologies." 

Ginny looked vaguely amused. "I suppose I could think of worse ways to spend the night."

Harry was about to ask her to elaborate on that further when they both heard the gruff voice of Collins bellowing from the common area. 

"Wake up all of you! We've got a situation in here!" They looked at each other, then without another word, and having no time for embarrassment, they each quickly pulled on the clothes that they had been wearing the day before. Pausing only to make sure that no one saw them coming out of the same room, the two of them made their way to the commons and took seats at the large table in the center. Around the room they could see that almost their entire squadron was severely hung over, with two exceptions, Fleur who had stayed sober, and John, who had not.

Collins was passing around mugs of a dark black potion meant to cure hangovers, which the team drank eagerly.

"Aren't you going to drink that John?" Jack asked, looking quizzical. John grinned at the Aussie. 

"Nope." He said, sounding a little smug. "I don't get hangovers."  
"Lucky you." Ramirez muttered, his head laid down on the table as he waited for the potion to take effect.

"Alright!" Collins barked, making the team wince and many to grab their heads in pain. One would think he'd done it on purpose, to look at his face. "Just got a call in from the American Department of Magical Affairs. It seems they've got a little hostage situation on their hands. A wizard elementary school was taken over this morning by former Death Eaters led by Azkaban escapee Antonin Dolohov."

Jack sighed exasperatedly. "Can't you get the bloody Tomahawks to cover this? It's their week!"

"Normally yes, but this is sort of personal you see-" 

John gasped, his murky eyes wide. "They're after me, aren't they?"

***********

The halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were quiet, which wasn't really surprising when one took into consideration that it was summer and there were no students, and indeed few teachers, currently within the castle. That didn't stop Albus Dumbledore, current headmaster of the school, from appreciating a rare moment of quiet during one of his many wanderings around the ancient and mysterious castle. 

But, alas, all too quickly the elderly wizard found himself at the gargoyle-blocked entrance to his office. "Pepper Imps." He stated, and the gargoyle leapt to the side, revealing the staircase that led to the entrance. 

He nodded greetings to several of the portraits of former headmasters and headmistresses and was about to take his seat behind his desk when a polite cough caused him to pause, he turned to face the source of the noise, the School Sorting Hat.

"Sorry to bother you Professor," The hat said. "But there's something I think you need to hear, someone who would like a word with you." 

Dumbedore looked surprised for a moment, but then nodded. He took a seat and placed the hat on his head. At once his vision went black for a moment, when that moment passed he began to see a vague shape appear. After a few moments the shape solidified into that of a very large, rugged looking man. The man was tall and broad shouldered, his face and head were covered by a thick auburn colored beard and a mane of the same color. 

He wore robes of a deep crimson color which were covered by a forest green, fur lined cloak. His piercing green eyes gazed into Dumbledore's twinkling blue with a laser-like intensity. "Albus Dumbledore." The man spoke in a deep rumbling voice. 

"Lord Gryffindor." Dumbledore responded, bowing his head respectively.

"You know why I have called you here, Headmaster Dumbledore?" Gryffindor asked, a brow arched. 

"Indeed. Am I to assume you are aware of the current… situation?" Dumbledore 

"I am. I called you here today, because I believe it is time that my legacy was passed on."

Dumbledore bowed once again. "I would agree the situation warrants it. I would daresay it requires a full activation of the Armory." 

If Gryffindor was surprised by this, his face didn't show it. "You believe that is necessary?" 

"Quite. This situation is far more dangerous than it appears."

Gryffindor paused for quite some time before speaking again, thinking on Dumbledore's words. "The First, Third and Fourth are missing, they will need to be found." 

The headmaster shook his head. "The Third is right where it needs to be, the First and Fourth, will need to be recovered however, yes."

"And the Second?" Gryffindor asked, curiously.

"Safe." Dumbledore responded. "In my possession." 

Gryffindor nodded, satisfied. "Then the path is clear, Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. May they be successful." 

"For all our sakes." Dumbledore responded, before removing the Sorting Hat from his head.

"Interesting." He muttered, a far away look in his eyes, "Very interesting."

******************

The rest of the Redhawks turned confused looks at John. But he was looking straight at Collins. 

The Redhawk C.O. raised an eyebrow. "How did you know that?"

"Never mind that. It's true isn't it?" 

"Er, well, yes. You… and Kara, you're the ones that Dolohov and his cronies were trying to call out. I don't know why though."

"I do." John's face turned hard and serious. "Or I have a damn good idea. When do we leave?" 

"Dolohov has given the DMA an hour to produce you. I suggest we take that hour to prepare." Collins lit up another cigar. "Mr. Weasley. If you would."

Ron nodded and brought out a mannequin dummy dressed in what looked like leather body armor… which is pretty much what it was. 

"This is the regulation body armor all agents are required to wear during field missions." Ron began, slipping into his Quartermaster mode and gesturing at the armor with his wand. "It is made from one hundred percent cured Graphorn hide, so it'll bounce most curses. It's covered by a temperature-regulation charm to make sure you're not roasted alive, as well as a self-activated Disillusionment spell, when needed."

"Next, Dragon hide gloves and boots." Ron said, holding up a pair of each. "Each has a sticking charm cast over it, all you have to do is tap them with your wands. Like so;" He put one of the gloves on and tapped it with his wand. He placed his hand against the wall and it stuck until he gave a sharp tug. "Useful for climbing up a wall, or keeping your grip on a broom."

"Next up we've got your cloaks." He picked up a cloak and hood that looked like it was woven from oil. "We've developed an improved invisibility cloak." He threw the shimmering black material around his shoulders and fastened the silver clasp. "With these, all you have to do is clasp it, and throw up the hood." He did so and faded from sight. After a second he reappeared. "Also we've added a face mask into the collar of the armor that will filter out poisonous gases, toxic fumes and smoke. It will also allow you to breathe underwater for a limited amount of time" he took the cloak off and threw it back over the dummy. 

"And, last but not least, specialized flight goggles. The lenses are made from shatter proof glass. They're water tight and have been enchanted for night vision, heat vision binocular long distance, and they can see through most walls. Virtually every type of vision you could ever possibly need."

"Right. Well, now that you've all been briefed, it's time to get suited up." The twelve Aurors pulled themselves away from the table, the last vestiges of their hangovers long gone and walked into the locker room that was at the end of the corridor which held the doors to their quarters. 

John led the way in and they found twelve silver lockers each with a metal embossed nametag, only the tags weren't sporting the Aurors real names, rather "clever" nicknames. 

"Looks like Collins was in a funny mood." John muttered, looking at his own, name, "White Knight."

"Could've been Ron." Harry responded, then looked at his own tag. "B.W.L? What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Boy Who Lived, naturally," Tonks informed him with a grin, then turned to peer at her own tag. "Anybody know what a Naiad is?" 

"It's a type of Nymph." Kara replied. "And now that we've solved Harry's Acronym, what's a D.I.D?"

"Damsel In Distress." 

"Oh that's just hilarious. Tonks, I'll trade you!" Kara growled as she began to pull on her armor.

"Not a chance. Maybe Ramirez here will trade you, if you fancy Lock-pick anyway." 

"I don't know about you all, but I like my name!" Jack called out enthusiastically. "Jackaroo, must be from that time I wrestled that Pegasus to the ground down in the pens." 

"Yeah, it's got nothing to do with your name at all." Ami said, sarcastically.

"Well, what's yours then?" 

Ami grinned. "Kamikaze." She said proudly. The entire locker room erupted in laughter.

Kara noticed Ryu, whose locker was right next to hers, smirking at his name plate. "What is it Ryu?" The non-talkative wizard stepped aside so she could see. "Silent Ry," She read. "Sometimes I wonder if you really are a Kevin Smith fan, after all." 

Suddenly they heard a long stream of French cursing followed by a loud BANG! They all turned to see Fleur holding a smoking wand pointed at her locker, her name plate had been expertly melted into slag, and her face looked absolutely furious. She slammed open her locker and began roughly donning her armor, muttering the entire time. Occasionally they would hear phrases in English, "I have nevair been so insulted…" or "'Ow dare they?" and, "Of all ze stupeed…" Then she slammed the locker shut and stormed out of the room.

There was a moment of stunned and awkward silence. 

"So…" Jack said, "I'm guessing hers wasn't very flattering… what did you get Asher?" 

"Canada Dry."

"Canada Dry? What's that mean?" 

"It's a muggle drink, beer or ginger ale. I can't remember." John cut in

"Hmm." 

By now the team had finished putting on their armor and were following Fleur's trail of swears back into the common room. On the way out, John noted that Procyon's name was Lone Wolf and Krum's Tag was magically wiped blank, which made him think it had been something embarrassing, though obviously not as embarrassing as Fleur's had been.

"Your hour is near up," Collins turned to face them, his cigar smoke forming a ring around his head. "I think it's time you lot were catching the 'Port to the U.S."

They filed out of the Redhawk ready-room, grabbing their Tempest brooms off a rack by the door on their way out.

They made their way down to the transportation room. Ron tapped the runes around the door frame, keying in the appropriate sequence for their destination. There was a flash of light and the door filled with a green mist. 

"Here we go!" Asher called as he led the way through the doorway.

Ron watched and when the last of them went through the portal he shut it down and went to await their return with his sister.

The room remained empty for only a moment before another figure crept through the door. He glanced at the portal and the runes that spelled out the destination of the others. Nodding to himself, he switched two of the runes around and re activated the portal. The portal went green again and he stepped through. A moment later it deactivated and the room fell quiet again.

When the world came back into focus, the Redhawks found themselves outside a large building that was obviously the wizard school. American MLE's were rushing around frantically obeying the orders of a tall lanky man with thinning blonde hair, who was standing in the center of the whirlwind of controlled chaos around him.

"Phillip!" John called out as he rushed to greet the man. Phillip turned and, when he saw John and the Redhawks heading towards them, a look of relief creased his features.

"John, Kara, thank Merlin you both are here." He said, shaking John's hand. "Dolohov wouldn't even begin hostage negotiation until you were here."

He turned towards one of the underlings. "Inform the terrorists that the Screibb's are here." The young man nodded and hurried away, casting a _sonorus _charm on himself as he went. 

"Okay, now that we've bought ourselves a little time, how are you going to get those kids out of there?" 

Asher and the rest surveyed the building before them. "Ami, why don't you take a look up top, see how many they've got stationed on the roof." With a quick salute Ami mounted her broom and threw the hood of her cloak up, fading from sight. 

"Any idea how many kids are in that school?" Ramirez asked, eyeing the building.

Phillip sighed, looking ungodly tired. "At most, maybe two hundred. We think they've moved the majority of the students and teachers into the cafeteria." He flicked his wand and a schematic of the ground floor of the school appeared. He pointed to a large room that was almost dead center of the floor plan. "Right here, see? It has two entrances; here, and here, which are easily guarded. In order to even get to the cafeteria you have to pass what has no-doubt become a gauntlet of classrooms hiding death eaters"

There was a rush of air as Ami reappeared among them. "They've got eight death-eaters up there; two on each wall." 

"Not only that." Kara muttered, looking through her goggles at the building. "I've spotted Dolohov, he's got six… wait, seven, in there with him and about four or five students." 

"Ami. Did you happen to notice if there was a roof access or not?" Harry asked

"There was." She affirmed, nodding. "And I think you're thinking what I'm thinking."

"Hmm." Jack muttered, scratching his chin. "Go up there all ghost like while Kara and Johnny boy keep 'em distracted down here. Take out the sentries up there than slip in. Is that what you're planning?" 

"Got it in one." Harry nodded. "Okay, other than John and Kara they don't know we're here. They'd be stupid to think they'd come alone, but we'll have to hope that they are stupid enough."

"The question." Ramirez muttered looking at the schematic, "Is which spot to strike at first, the cafeteria or Dolohov's little hold out." 

"Both." Krum muttered scowling, "If ve strike at one, there is a possibility that they vill varn the others, that vould put the children in danger." 

"Right. We'll split into two teams. Ramirez, Fleur, Krum and Jack will come with me. We'll take Dolohov. Harry, you take the rest and clean up the cafeteria." Asher pulled himself upright and dusted off his hands. They all, with the exception of Kara and John, mounted their brooms and donned their invisibility cloaks. 

They swooped low over the building. "Ryu!" Asher spoke quietly into his mask, which also acted as a communication's link to the rest of the team. "Since you don't use incantations, do you think you can knock them out quietly and quickly?" 

There was no response for a moment, but then a staggered line of eight bursts of red light shot out of thin air and struck each of the death eaters with practiced precision. They each crumpled to the floor, one after the other, like a line of dominoes. 

The team landed and after securing the unconscious death eaters, turned towards the door, however they quickly discovered that it was locked. 

"Alohomora!" Ami cried, flicking her wand. It remained locked tight.

"Here, let me try." Procyon drew his wand and cast a silencing charm on the area. He snapped his fingers and sparks flew from the tip of his index finger like a welding torch. He drew a rune in the air that left a purple afterimage on their retinas, then drew back his hand and struck the image. As soon as he hit the rune a bolt of lightning shot out of it and blew the door clean off it's hinges. "Lock THAT!" He muttered, smirking.

"You're a bit scary, you know that?" Tonks said, eyeing him warily. 

"I know." 

They kicked the door out of the way and quietly made their way into the school.

John and Kara approached the school building slowly. Something about this entire ordeal felt, _wrong_. It just seemed to John like there was a variable in the equation he wasn't seeing as they made their way towards the school. 

_"Sonorus" _he muttered, pointing his wand at his own throat. "Dolohov!" His magically amplified voice rang through the courtyard of the school. 

__

"Ah! The esteemed Jonathan Screibb." Dolohov's voice called back. "Or I assume it is, how do I know it's you?" John rolled his eyes and drew his sword. The Diamond Blade caught the light and refracted it in a shower of rainbows. 

"Excellent! My Master and his associate are very interested in that artifact mister Screibb. Very interested indeed." 

"So interested that you would stoop to attacking innocent children?" John shot back.

"There are no innocents, John." John shook his head, frustrated something still felt wrong. They'd have been stupid to think that he and Kara would come here alone. It was suicidal, unless of course they…

Suddenly that missing variable revealed itself. The Traitor. The traitor from Project Guardian, he must've have warned them they were coming, therefore…

"Harry! Asher!" He spoke quickly into the communications mask.

"You're walking into a trap!" Harry rolled his eyes and stared at the twenty or so Death Eaters that surrounded him and the rest of the team, each with their wands pointed at them and a smirk on their faces. _Thanks for the early warning John. _He thought sarcastically. 

They had come down the steps and were making their way down into the cafeteria when a dozen dark wizards leaped out at them wands drawn. Before they could even think of a retaliatory action, the eight sentries they'd knocked out, plus another that was armed with an invisibility cloak came running down the stairs, effectively surrounding them.

__

Now they found themselves in something of a mexican standoff. "So…" Harry muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Everybody got an up to date will?" 

Ginny had decided early on that she hated when the others went out on a mission. She hated the fact that she was left behind, waiting for them to return, wondering if they'd all make it back, and even if they did, what kind of injuries she'd have to mop up. She already readied the medical wing for an emergency. Now all that was left, was to wait. And wait. And wait. She hated waiting.

Finally she got up from her chair with an exasperated sigh. Waiting, despite the lack of doing anything, was exhausting. Maybe if she took a nap, time would go by faster. Yeah, that seemed logical. It had to be better than sitting around waiting anyway.

She downed the sleeping potion and practically fell into her bed. Things went black in an instant. 

"_Ginny…" _She thought she heard a voice whisper in her ear, but when she turned there was no one there. _Then again, this is a dream, _She reasoned. _That doesn't really mean much._ Still, the voice sounded familiar. She was sure she'd heard it before, in fact it almost sounded like Harry. Almost, but there was definitely something different about it. 

"_Ginny…" _There it was again. She still couldn't place the familiarity of it though. _"Oh, Ginny, you've forgotten me. I'm hurt." _The voice had taken on a decidedly insidious tone. Like a snake's hiss. _"Imagine, me, your very first friend. And you've forgotten all about me."_

Um, wait, what? Ginny looked around the murky location confused. Suddenly her own voice rang out, mocking her. _Like a friend I can carry around in my pocket._

Ginny stifled a gasp. Oh, god no.

_That's right Ginny, I'm back. _The voice laughed. _Your Dear Tom_

Dear Tom, No one's ever understood me like you. Ginny looked around but couldn't find the source of the sound. The only thing she could see was a flash of acid green out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked again it was gone.

__

Dear Tom, I wish Harry would notice me, but he never does. Next she heard the distinctive sound of a quill scratching on parchment, amplified a thousand fold. She fell to her knees and her ears began to bleed from the sound. Then it stopped. Just like that.

__

Dear Tom, There's been another attack, and I'm scared. The hiss of a snake echoed around her. 

__

Dear Tom, I think I'm losing my mind. A flash of fangs, dripping poison.

__

Dear Tom, I think it's me, I think I'm the one attacking everyone. Cruel, evil yellow eyes.

"Leave me alone!" Ginny shouted. "Go away! You're dead! Harry killed you, you're dead!"

_Poor Ginny, did you really think your precious Harry could keep me away? No, no, You're mine, Ginny, you've always been mine. And soon I'll come to claim you. Soon._

"Stay away from me!" Ginny shouted into the darkness. The only response was a high cruel laugh, a laugh that made Ginny cold inside. 

"You heard her!" The new voice, which sounded oddly like Ginny herself, was heralded by the sound of a phoenix song multiplied tenfold. It drove away the darkness and Ginny saw the shadow of wings flit over her, and the cold feeling evaporated instantly. "Leave now!" 

_Ginny! _Tom's voice shouted, enraged._ This isn't over Ginny! Ginny!_

"Ginny!" Her eyes snapped open to see a blur of red orange that gradually focused into the face of her brother.

"Ron! What's wrong?"

"They're back, Harry's injured." Before he'd even finished his sentence Ginny was out of the room and dashing towards the medical wing. Ramirez, John and Jack were carrying a bruised and bleeding Harry between them. Ryu, Asher, Fleur, Kara and Tonks were a little worse for wear, but Ginny figured they would live.

Harry, she wasn't so sure about.

"He got hit by a-" John began

"Save it for later." She snapped, all business. "Just get him in there. We'll deal with the how later." 

"Yes ma'am." They laid him down on the bed and Ginny ripped open his shirt to find his chest covered in blood. 

"I though his armor would block all this!" She cried as she began to mop up the blood that was leaking from multiple lacerations. She saw Ron turn a disturbing shade of green and leave quickly. 

He entered the common room as Jack and John were in the middle of telling Collins what had happened. 

"Right so there we were, completely surrounded." Jack was saying as he pulled up a chair at the table. "Harry had just finished making an absurd quip about final will and testaments…"

"Everybody got an up to date will?"

"Oh yeah." Jack muttered. "Standard procedure mate. I've had one for years now."

"Well, that's good to know." Ramirez muttered back. "However, mine hasn't been updated in a few years."

"Ah that's a damn shame." Tonks added. "Guess that means we'll have to figure a way out of this won't we?" 

"Yep. Guess so."

"So any bright ideas?" Asher asked. "I don't think I can take them staring at us like we're nuts for much longer."

"I wouldn't worry about that." Black said, pointing his wand at the palm of his hand. With a whispered incantation a small amount of sand poured out of the end of it. "NOW!" He shouted throwing the sand in the air, a split second later he and everyone else except Ryu ducked.

Everything seemed to slow down as Procyon's whispered instructions echoed through his mind. Instructions that the inane chatter had prevented the death eaters from hearing.

_You're the best duelist Ryu, so I'm going to slow down time for you, you'll have about ten seconds do as much damage as you can. Be ready!_

Ryu had drawn both his wands and was firing stunning spells as fast as he was able. He managed to drop four of the death eaters before they could respond. He noticed a spark of green light heading in his direction, at about an eighth of it's normal speed. He sidestepped that easily and leaped at the death eater, kicking him in the jaw. He used his momentum to pull into a smooth back flip over a pair of stun spells sent his way. 

He pushed off the ground with his hands again and landed next to Harry behind his barrier that was an overturned desk.

With a lurch time righted itself and the Redhawks and Death Eaters scrambled for cover behind upturned tables and benches.

"Tonks! Ami!" Asher shouted over the incantations being yelled. "Get those kids out of here! Get them to safety and stay with them!" The two women slowly crawled and pulled their way towards the knot of frightened children, intending to lead them to safety.

Fleur stepped from behind cover, _"Stupe-" _She began, before being struck in each shoulder by a pair of violently purple curses. Instantly a sick red burn appeared on either side of her neck. She screamed and fell to the ground. With a swish of robes, Procyon appeared next to her. 

"Are you okay?" He asked gruffly.

"Why Procyon, one would almost think you were _worried_ about me!" She rasped with a weak smile.

Procyon snorted derisively and rolled his eyes. "You wish."

"Peeg." She muttered before blacking out

Black managed a small smirk. "You should learn when to _stay down_, you stupid Veela." Anybody who happened to be looking closely at him would see his eyes turn a blood red, right before his hands became engulfed in fire. He stood up and saw two death eaters do the same. After a bit of concentration on Procyon's part they were both very shocked to see their wands burst into flame right before their very eyes. With strangled cries they dropped their wands and looked up in time to see a large fireball impact with each of their chests.

Procyon's eyes returned to their normal color and the fire surrounding his hands disappeared, just in time for him to have to duck a nasty looking electric blue curse.

_"Stupefy!" _Harry shouted sending a bolt of red light towards one of the other death eaters. 

"Is that widdle Harry Potter I hear?" Harry near froze, until Ryu pulled him down. "Why I haven't seen you since you was jus' a widdle baby boy!" 

_No way! _Harry screamed in his mind. _It can't be! I thought she was dead!_

"Aww not talking? How wude!" Bellatrix pouted. "I know how to get you to come out. He saw her reveal herself from behind a wall, saw her point her wand at one of the scared little kids scattered around. _"Avada Kadavra!" _Without thinking, Harry dove and tackled the little kid. 

John had all but realized that his warning was fairly ineffectual. He could easily hear the sound of spell fire from inside the building. _So much for the negotiations. _He thought. 

"John I'm surprised at you." Dolohov admonished from inside the building. "I thought we told you and your wife to come alone." John snorted. _yeah, right. _Still, the time for talking was over. He drew his sword, and with little more than a nod, he and Kara dissapparated.

Dolohov saw them disappear and for a moment thought they had fled. The thought that maybe they were coming there had scarcely entered his head before he heard two loud _CRACKS! _and all hell broke loose. 

Kara saw the five students all huddled underneath a table, looking absolutely terrified. No sooner had she regained her balance than she drew her wand and pointed it at the table. _"Portus!" _The table glowed yellow for a moment before it, and all the children, vanished with a _pop! _

Two of the Death Eaters closed in on her, a third quickly disapparated. Not bothering to worry about the deserter, she kicked the wand out of the first one's hand, then landed a hard right-hook into the second one's jaw. The first one grabbed her around the middle and and threw her to the floor. She gasped in pain as his leather boot connected with her ribcage. 

John meanwhile was busy tangling with the other four death eaters and Dolohov himself.

_"Avada Kadavra!" _John saw the bolt of green light out of the corner of his eye. Instead of dodging it, he brought the flat of his blade out to meet it and bounced it back, hitting the death eater square in the chest. The black robed figure crumpled to the ground.

"Dragon's scale." He told the corpse. He heard a sound behind him and with out thinking he whirled around and plunged the blade into the sternum of whoever was trying to sneak up on him, as well as the wall behind him.

"Well, hello Dolohov!" John said through gritted teeth. "You said you wanted a look at my sword. Is this close enough for you?" Dolohov managed a raspy gurgle and blood leaked out of his mouth before his eyes went dark. 

"JOHN!" He heard Kara's scream. He whipped around to see two Death Eaters kicking at Kara's torso. Her wand lay a few feet away. 

_"Larcanum Inflamarae!" _A jet of flame leaped out of his wand and lit both their robes on fire. Kara kicked at them and they both stumbled backwards and fell out the window, with the crash of breaking glass. 

John tried to tug his sword free but it was stuck good into the wall. 

_"Avada Kadavra!" _ A flash of green and John had barely just enough time to duck and roll, leaving his sword behind. Turns out this was exactly what the death eater was hoping for, taking a flying leap over desks and other debris he grasped the hilt of the sword and Disapparated, taking the Diamond Blade with him. 

The remaining dark wizard took a small white sphere out of his pocket and threw it to the ground before he Disapparated as well. As soon as the sphere struck the earth, a horrid unearthly shriek echoed through the school, like the sound of a banshee.

Harry saw the green light impact with his chest and felt an intense burning sensation where it impacted with his armor. There was a horrible tearing sound as the curse ripped the armor from his body, the residual energy causing large and deep cuts to open across his chest. Harry screamed in pain, but the sound was drowned out by a sound much louder. 

"That's the signal!" Bellatrix shouted, barely able to get above the sound. "We're done here!" There was a series of loud cracks, then everything went quiet.

"John?" Asher rasped into him communicator, holding his chest where he'd taken a nasty curse. "You okay?"

"Kara's injured. I'm fine, we managed to take out four death eaters, Dolohov being one of them."

"That's good to hear, I suppose." Asher muttered. "Well, I suppose we ought to leave the MLE's to clean up our mess. Ami, how are those kids?" 

"Scared out of their minds, but otherwise okay." 

"Well, that's the best we could've hoped for. Alright everybody better portkey back so we can get ourselves mopped up." 

"Christ!" Ramirez cried. "Jack you better get over here and help me with him, he doesn't look so good…" 

"So then, we rode the Portkey's back here, and well, you know the rest." Jack finished up his story just as Ginny came walking out of the medical wing, her face was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. 

"How is everybody?" Collins asked her. 

She sighed. "Everybody should be okay, even Harry. Ryu, just has a few bruises and a black eye, Asher, got hit by a _laceraetus _curse Fleur, looks like she tried to swallow nitric acid. Kara has three broken ribs and a bruised collarbone and Tonks only has a sprained ankle."

"She tripped over a desk." Ami supplied helpfully, looking amused. 

"Yes well, Harry he's stable for the moment but he's weak and lost a lot of blood. I've got an IV of Blood Restoration Potion in him so that'll help, what I want to know is _what the hell happened to him?"_

"He got hit by a killing curse." Ramirez spoke up. "His armor took the brunt of the curse, hence why it was ripped to shreds, what you saw was the remains of the curse."

"Well that would explain the large burn mark in the center of his chest, but I don't understand how a _Kedavra_ caused cuts." Ginny looked perplexed. 

"Bellatrix Lestange." Procyon replied. "I saw her hit him with a couple of _laceraetus _before sounding the retreat."

Ginny shook her head. That explained the large cuts, all except one. The one that leaked blood down his face, the one down the center of his forehead. 

The one shaped like a lightning bolt.


	9. Hindsight is 2020

A/N Okay, yes I know, it's been like four months since my last update, but to be fair, I was sans-internet for three months of that and the last I had school, …a lot of school.

So yeah, um, I'm back… hopefully. After all, I still do have school.

This chapter is dedicated to Kayla, for without her occasional badgering me about it, it probably never wouldn't have gotten done. Plus she's my most loyal reader for some reason :P. Cheers.

Chapter 9: Hindsight is 20/20

It's funny how the mind wanders, when it's bored.

_"John where are you going?"_

"_I'm going to get my damn sword back."_

It seems to have it's own ideas about what thoughts are relevant. And, unfortunately it seems to always pick the ones you don't want to dwell on.

_"Let me come with you."_

"No. I need you to stay here. Trust me."

"Then take Ami or Procyon. Take Jack, or Asher, Fleur, somebody. Just don't go alone."

"I have to. I lost it, I won't risk anybody getting it back. Trust me."

Trust me.

Trust me.

Famous Last Words. You'd think me, of all people, would know when I'd just jinxed myself. Believe it or not, I had to. Okay, I didn't have to go alone, that was my own stupidity. But I did have to get my sword back. If I didn't, I'd die, and then, consequently, Kara would die. It really is a wonder I'm still alive, now that I think of it, what with the balancing act necessary to keep me that way.

_"You want to know where the Death Eaters are holed up? Why?"_

"My business is my own! You have your money, now tell me!"

"Look to the abandoned Malfoy Manor. The answers you seek are there. But if I were you-"

"-You're not-"

" -I wouldn't go poking around there, if you know what's good for you."

"I don't."

It was dumb. I know, we've been over this. But hey, I figured, how hard could breaking into the stronghold of the most evil wizard who ever lived and who is currently receiving demonic aid really be?

Pretty damn hard apparently. I had just managed to climb to one of the upper towers when the roof collapses out from under me and I find myself spiraling into a ring of about twelve death eaters, all with their wands pointed straight at me. I'm a good duelist, but I'm not _that_ good. Maybe Ryu could have beaten them, but not me. So I gave up. It's better, I figured, to be captured and then later escape, then be killed out-right. Right?

I'm still debating that choice.

So they threw me in the dungeons, after taking all my gear, including my portkey out of here, they locked the door and now I'm stuck, waiting. They hung my sword outside the door. It's not back in my possession, but the proximity will enough to keep the curse from doing me in.

Footsteps coming closer. It's him, I don't even have to guess. I know. It's him, Sarezhade. The door to the dungeon swings open and he swaggers in. The arrogance that radiated off him was almost tangible.

"Hello John." He growled.

"Sarezhade, I presume? Whoever let you out of your trinket?"

He smiled, cold and cruel. "I must assume then that all Screibbs are as arrogant and annoying as you are. Your ancestor was."

"He kicked your ass didn't he? I'd say that's worth bragging about." He struck me across the face, leaving a small gash behind. I watched as he left my prison and strode over to where my sword was hanging on the wall, glinting in the dim light. He removed a silver knife and sliced a chunk off it like it was made of butter. I bit back a howl of pain, it felt like he'd taken a piece of my arm. As I watched the tiny crystalline turned black as coal in his hands. With a satisfied smirk, he slipped it into a pouch and entered my cell again.

"You really have no idea what you're up against John." Sarezhade said conversationally as he began to pace around the dungeon. "My forces far exceed anything your pathetic Guardians can muster. Vampires, werewolves, dementors. Horrors your feeble human brain can't even begin to comprehend.

"Do what you will Sarezhade." John gasped, sweat dripping from his forehead "I'll live to see your locked in that gem again."

"No. I'm afraid you won't see it." He smirked. "In fact, my face will be the last thing you'll _ever_ see. …"

"A'right Lads and Ladies, here we are about to dive into the den of evil itself in order to rescue our murky eyed chum." Jack muttered as the team, minus Harry who was still on inactive roster due to comatose state, stood just outside the Malfoy Mansion, having been led there by Kara's innate sense of her husband's location.

"Thank you for pointing out the obvious Dingo-breath." Tonks snapped, her nerves and her hair frazzled.

"People. Let's get serious now." Asher rumbled. "Here's the plan- Tonks, Ramirez, the two of you and Kara need to sneak in there disguised as Death Eaters, and rescue John. The rest of us will cover your retreat, once everyone is clear of the wards around this place. Port-key the hell out, clear?"

It had been a fairly simple matter to knock out three random Death Eaters and steal their robes. Then Tonks and Javier had altered their features into the first two death eaters they'd seen, ironically, Blaise Zabini and Morag MacDougal.

They had just made it to John's cell when the dungeon warden blocked their way. "Halt!" He commanded imperiously, until the two metamorphamagi removed their robes, then his entire demeanor changed.

"Lady Zabini, MacDougal sir, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was you."

"Well you realize it now, you twit. MOVE!" Tonks snapped, her lip curling in disgust. The stammering guard got out of their way and the three of them floated past, wondering exactly who the two shape-changers had become. Tonks stuck her chin out regally, only to fall flat on her face as soon as they'd turned a corner.

"Sodding robes!" She growled quietly as the other two helped her to her feet. Kara led them down the dungeon corridors, towards John's cell. When they'd reached it Javier managed to pick the lock open and swing the door open with a soft creak that woke John from his fitful sleep, he looked up at them bleary eyed, gaze unfocused.

"Aren't you a little short for a Death Eater?" He asked Kara, before she whipped off the hood.

"Oh hah hah, smart-ass." She grunted as she helped her husband to his feet. "You're just mad because for once _you_ get to be the 'damsel in distress'" John responded by sticking his tongue out at her.

"Wait a minute, how does a pure-blood like you know about Star Wars?" Tonks asked as the three of them half-carried, half-dragged him out of there.

John threw them a weary lopsided grin, "What can I say? I'm a pop-culture junkie."

After traveling down several corridors in the opposite direction that they had come from, they entered a large dining hall with many huge stained-glass windows on either wall depicting members of the Noble Malfoy house. Unfortunately they also found themselves face-to-face with a load of black robed men and women, as well as a number of dark creatures.

"I've got a bad feeling about this…" John muttered.

Asher received a coded message through his wand, nodding grimly he looked up at the rest of the team. "Their in trouble let's go." Wordlessly the seven remaining Redhawks mounted their brooms and zoomed heedlessly towards the Manor. Ami flew straight for the stained-glass windows, just before she reached them grabbed her broom and whipped around until she was holding it like a rifle, falling towards the windows."

"_REDUCTO!" _She roared, in a second each and every one of those windows shattered, giving the aurors access to the inside. With a feral yell Ami landed in the midst of the enemies, a whirlwind of hexes and curses flying from the tip of her wand.

The rest of the team was seconds behind her, Procyon, his hands engulfed in flames, drove back a pair of Giants, Fleur and Ryu found themselves surrounded by Vampires, Asher transformed into a wild grizzly bear, stunning spells bouncing of his flank as he bowled into a group of death eaters.

Ami lost her wand to a disarming-charm, the stick of bamboo sailing into the hand of the death eater who shot the spell.

"Big mistake." She grunted, she toss her broomstick out a few meters in front of her where it floated about two feet above the ground. She then leapt on top of it and used it as a springboard to launch herself into the air. She landed a one-two kick to the death eaters chest, then a mid-air backflip caught him under the chin. She landed lightly on her feet, snatched her wand out of the air and calmly picked up her broom, leaving the blacked-out death eater where he fell.

Jack and Ramirez stood back-to-back to each other, their brooms held under their arms.

"Lock 'n' Load!" Jack shouted putting his broom in lock-mode. _"Stupefy" _a machine gun storm of green light shot from the tips of their wands stunning enemy after enemy as they rotated on the spot.

John had taken up his sword and was busy hacking away at some multi-limbed demonic horrors that were ninety-five percent fangs and claws.

_"Lumos Solem!" _Fleur cried, the streak of sunlight issued from her wand vaporizing the Vampire in front of her. She didn't see the other one until it had leaped on her back and plunged his fangs into her neck. She let out a cry of pain. Next thing she knew the vampire was forcefully thrown off her due to a fireball, courtesy of Procyon Black seconds later he wa forced to defend her from a legion of evil looking red-caps.

Ryu was dueling with Flint and MacDougal and giving as good as he got.

"_Infueges!" _Flint shot a jet of flame from his wand, which Ryu counters with a sphere of water, at the same time throwing a shield up to block MacDougal's stun spell. He crouched behind the shield as the two death eaters fired off volley after volley of curses until the shield finally fell and Ryu was over-come

Fleur was not looking so good either. _"Merde!"_ She swore holding her hand against the pair of gashes in her throat, sweat ran down her forehead and she fought for breath. After a moment, she passed out.

_We need to leave. _Procyon thought angrily. _NOW! _His eyes glowed an emerald green and the floor beneath them shook to the very foundation. The walls around them began to crack and crumble around them. All fighting ceased as all parties looked around them in fear.

Well, almost.

John found himself facing Morag MacDougal, the real Morag MacDougal, with his wand drawn.

"It's time I did what my master was unable to." He pointed the wand at John. _"Occultis Paramis Extus." _A bolt of black energy hit John right between the eyes before he could even consider moving. He screamed in pain as blood coursed down his face.

With a deafening roar the walls and ceiling began to collapse around them. "The Wards are broken!" Asher yelled over the din. "Everybody out NOW!" he activated the Master-key that would allow the entire teams port-keys to function whether they were able to use them or not. In a blink, they were all gone.

With a start Harry's eyes popped open and he sat up with a gasp. Once he realized he was in the Redhawk hospital wing, he calmed down and took stock of himself, aside from a little nausea, dizziness and soreness. He felt fine.

Then he tried to get out of bed, and suddenly found himself on the floor.

"Harry?" Ginny walked in, looking worn and ragged and carrying a large leather-bound book. "What are you doing on the floor?"

"I was kind of wondering that myself, actually." Harry replied mildly, looking up at her. "How come my legs don't work?"

"Harry, you've been in a coma for the past week. Between that and the potions we've had you on, your legs are going to be out for a little while longer."

"Oh." Harry muttered as Ginny helped him crawl back into the bed. "Fantastic. What're you reading anyway?"

With an embarrassed blush Ginny revealed the cover of her book. _Releasing the Beast Within: A Beginners Guide to Animagus Transformation. _By Jake Berenson.

Harry grinned weakly. "Have you tried transforming yet?"

Ginny shook her head. "No, something's holding me back. I'm not sure what it is, but something doesn't feel right, It's like-" There was a piercing scream followed by Collins' loud voice summoning her.

"Stay here I'll find out what's up." Leaving a very disgruntled Harry behind, Ginny rushed into the common room to find the entire squad gathered around… something. When she entered they quickly made room for her to get through.

If she hadn't been a professional healer, what she saw next might have caused her to become ill. As it was she had a hard time.

John was lying on the floor convulsing with blood leaking out of his eyes. Kara was kneeling on the ground next to him, glowing hands pressed to his face. As Ginny and the others watched the bleeding slowed then stopped completely.

"John what happened?" Kara asked desperately.

"Worry about that later!" She snapped. "We need to get him into the medical wing now. Asher, Jack carry him in there! Hurry!" The two men hefted John between them and carefully hauled him into a bed in the medical wing.

Ginny began removing salves, potions, and medical instruments from cabinets and placing them on the table.

"Okay first things first, Kara I need to know exactly what you just did to him." She muttered tersely, her gaze focused on the tool in her hand.

Kara was meanwhile placing bandages over her husband's eyes. "I'm a biokinetic. I can heal some injuries just by touching them. Why do you think I was made field medic?"

Ginny nodded. It had made sense. "Well, you did stop the blood flow, but whatever curse was used on him, it's like nothing I've ever seen before."

"Sar…rez….zhade!" John rasped. "Broke… my sword."

"What is he talking about?" Harry wondered.

"That doesn't matter!" Ginny said distractedly. "Whatever they did to him, it's taken his eyesight. I don't know a cure for it!" She sighed sadly. "I'm afraid he's permanently blind."

The entire room went silent save for John's raspy breathing. "He broke my sword."

Suddenly it clicked into place for Kara and she swore vehemently. "He broke the Diamond Blade." She dashed into the other room where they'd all appeared moments before. There, lying where he had fallen, was the jewel-like blade and near the hilt the was a small, barely perceptible piece missing from it.

"I don't understand why that's so important." Javier wondered. "He could still use the sword, well, if he was still able to see, I mean."

"No, you don't understand, he and that sword are connected. A piece of it is like a piece of him. What kind of dark magic could they do if they say, had a finger? Or an eye? A drop of blood, a hair off his head?"

Stunned looks were on everyone's faces. They were all Aurors, they knew what kind of dark magic could be done to a person with just a single hair.

"What can we do?" Asher asked. Kara's face took on a dark look as she replied.

"Nothing. All we can do is wait."

"Ginny you got another patient over here!" Procyon called, kneeling next to the prone figure of Fleur. The girl was gasping as if unable to breathe, her eyes were unfocused and dulled. Then she let out a scream and they could see inch and a half long fangs protruding out of her upper jaw.

"Shit!" Jack yelled and jumped back. "She's been bitten by a vampire!" Suddenly her eyes snapped into focus and she leaped into a crouching position, pupils dilated, hissing at them with her newly acquired fangs bared.

"Don't look at me." Ginny shrilled fearfully, "There's not a sodding lot I can do about that!"

"Then let me!" Procyon growled stunning the half-veela and throwing her into a side room, casting an unbreakable locking charm and sealing all the windows inside." They could hear her raging against the door inside.

"She'll be fine by morning, once the blood-lust wears off."

_The next day_

Ginny sighed in frustration. "Har-eee!" She whined. "I can't do this." She collapsed wearily into the chair next to Harry's bed.

"Yes you can Ginny." Harry replied encouragingly, "You just have to let go." They were currently in the hospital wing and Ginny was attempting to master transforming into an animal.

"Let go?" She shot him a curious look. "What do you mean?"

Harry growled in frustration, not being able to find the right words to express himself properly. "Let go, let yourself, you the human Ginny Weasley, go. You have to revert to something a bit more… primal. Something more animalistic. Let the animal come to the surface. Listen to the beat of your own heart, if you can, focus only on that, block everything else out… Ginny are you listening to me?"

She looked at him irritated, "No, I was 'blocking everything else out,' you git."

"Ah right." Harry's face colored a little in embarrassment. "Well, wait till I'm finished talking at least."

He cleared his throat and continued. "As I was saying, listen to your own heart, focus on that, let it become the pulse that you build the rhythm of your animal self around, if that makes any sense."

"Kind of… Let me give it a shot." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing her hearing until the only thing she could hear was her heart, which she didn't so much hear as feel, pounding deep within her chest.

_bu-bum bu-bum._

She felt an odd sensation, like she was being lifted into the air, though she knew her feet were still firmly on the ground.

_bu-bum bu-bum._

Suddenly there was a vague feeling on her back, around her shoulders… some kind of extension, appendages, …wings? The feeling of floating intensified and her heartbeat got louder, stronger. He shoulders flexed unconsciously, as if flapping these invisible wings, _up down, up, down._

_bu-bum, up… bu-bum. Down…_

_This is it. _Both Harry and Ginny thought at the same time. _the transformation is going to happen. _Harry smiled pleased as Ginny's form was enveloped in a faint white glow.

Then Ginny let out a grated gasp as electric bolts of pain shot through her body, breaking her concentration. She fell to the floor and the glow faded. As the pain vanished she was left with one lingering thought.

_Not yet…._

"Ginny. Are you okay?" Harry asked, a note of concern in his voice.

"I'm fine, but I'm not ready to try that again. Not yet."

"Fleur?"

"Don't turn on zat light."

"It's not sunlight, it won't hurt you."

"I know zees. I don't want you to see me… I don't want anybody to see me." A low growl emitted from the girl's throat. "I'm a monstair."

"No, you're not… you're only half a monster."

"Ha ha." Fleur spat. "I didn't know you could make a Joke, Procyon."

"It wasn't a joke, Veela are immune to vampirism, therefore only your human side was affected. Replaced, essentially."

"It doesn't matter," Fleur sighed pitifully, "I am still a monstair."

"Only you can decide that Fleur. Only you can make yourself a monster."

"Get out."

"The choice is yours."

"I SAID GET OUT!" She screamed, her eyes glowing an electric blue in the darkness. "LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMN YOU!" There was a crash as she threw something against the wall, then all was silent except for her ragged breath.

"If it helps. I killed the one that bit you." A sliver of light as Procyon opened the door, then he was gone, and everything was black again.

And she was alone.

_I'll never ride a broom again, or watch another movie, I can't fight, I can't read, I can't write, I can't be an Auror, I'll never see her face again. My god, I won't be able to cross the street without help…_

It's over, he's won.

"Stop it John." Her voice. 

"Stop what dearest?" He responded with more than an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

"I know what you're doing John, stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"Sorry?!" He sat up in the hospital bed they'd confined him to. "SORRY!? I CAN'T FUCKING SEE ANYMORE! I'd say if anybody earned the right to 'feel sorry-'" He did the air quotes. "-for himself I damn well have! God I don't even know if I'm talking to you, you could be behind me and I could be talking you a wall right now." He fell back on the bed, as if he'd been deflated. "What can I do Kara? What would you have me do? Try and put a good face on it? There's no silver lining here Dollface. No gold at the end of this rainbow. No-"

"Shut up!" She snapped.

"What?" He blinked, confused now that his rant had been cut off.

"Shut up." She repeated. "And stop acting like a god damned baby. I understand it's going to be hard for you, there's going to be a period of adjustment."

"PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT?!"

"WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME PLEASE?" She yelled, John was stunned into silence. Kara didn't ever yell, she just… didn't. "Now. As I was saying, there will be a period of adjustment, but damn it John, at least you're still alive. You very easily could have been otherwise. As long as you're alive, you can fight. There's hope."

John let out a defeated sigh. "I just don't know Kara. I feel so… invalid. How can I protect you now? How can I look out for you if I can't see?"

She reached out and grasped his hand. "Maybe it's my turn to look out for you now." She smiled sadly. "We'll get through this John. We'll find a way, I promise."


End file.
